


Saved

by Much_Ado_Abt_Novels



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Bounty Hunter Wars - K. W. Jeter
Genre: Angst, Boba Fett Needs A Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, In this house we don’t stan Star Wars’ blatant sexualization of Twi’lek women, M/M, Mentions of sex work, Mutual Pining, Racism/sexism/exotification toward Twi'leks, Slow Burn, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 45
Words: 61,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29093073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Much_Ado_Abt_Novels/pseuds/Much_Ado_Abt_Novels
Summary: Boba Fett rescues a girl from slavery on one of his bounty hunting missions, bringing her onboard his ship. He's not used to being the good guy, and it feels... nice. But though she seems to him more beautiful as each day passes, he holds no mistaken beliefs that he is the kind of man anyone could fall in love with.
Relationships: Boba Fett/Kuat of Kuat, Boba Fett/Original Character(s), Boba Fett/Original Female Character(s), Boba Fett/Reader, Kateel of Kuhlvult/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 441
Kudos: 223





	1. Rescue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ice_hot_13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/gifts).



> Dedicated to ice_hot_13 whose soft!Boba characterization gave me so many feels that I had to start a Boba Fett story of my own.

Boba Fett was on a hunt. His quarry—a former lieutenant from a Hutt syndicate—had led him on a weeks-long chase through casino planets and resorts, moving from pleasure to pleasure at a commendable pace. Some men, when they caught wind that Boba Fett was after them, retreated to safe houses on inhospitable worlds of fire or ice; others realized that getting caught was inevitable and chose to make the best of the time they had left.

It made for a more pleasant chase, he admitted, even if he had to deal with  _ people _ far oftener than he would’ve liked. At least these planets had inns where he could stop for a warm meal and space to stretch his legs. He adored his ship, but months trapped aboard could make even the most seasoned spacer stir-crazy.

Boba Fett followed a blinking dot on his handheld datapad through back alleyways. He’d input the tracker beacon’s data, and the screen gave him a visual to follow, showing streets and buildings instead of the simple “warmer,” “colder” of traditional trackers. He’d finally caught up to the lieutenant. Finally. He was ready for this chase to end. Around another bend, and there was the building his quarry was in: a spice den, by the looks of it.

Boba Fett brushed past the bouncer without a word. Everyone in the seedier parts of the galaxy knew who he was—recognized the T-visor of his Mandalorian armor, the distinctive green paint. Even the dent on his helmet was spoken of in speculative whispers. That was why he never fixed it. He liked the distinguishing mark, wanted people to know, definitively, that they were dealing with him and not another Mandalorian who happened to wear a similar shade of green.

Down a flight of steps into a gritty maze of rooms. This den was a far cry from the brightly-lit casinos where the lieutenant had begun their chase. Perhaps he was running low on credits. That also explained why he had lingered on this planet long enough for Boba to catch up to him.

Boba tucked away the datapad. His search would be visual from this point on. He was looking for a human male, light-haired and squinty-eyed. He peered into three rooms before spotting him.

The lieutenant was sprawled on the cushioned floor smoking a twisty pipe. Smoke curled thick to the ceiling. There were three other beings in the room, including a Twi’lek woman draped over him, wearing the bare minimum of clothing.

When Boba stepped into the room, the lieutenant scrambled to his feet, too slow. One of the other patrons screamed. Boba knocked aside the lieutenant’s pipe, twisted his arms behind him, and slapped binders on his wrists. The man was in a spice daze and barely fought back. Easy. He didn’t even have a bodyguard.

A blaster shot rang out, bouncing off the wall near Boba. Scratch that, the prone figure in the corner that he’d clocked as a passed-out addict was actually an armed guard, rising to his feet and demanding that Boba release the man. Boba shot him in the face. He kept his blaster out for a few more seconds, making sure that no one else was pulling out weapons.

The Twi’lek girl rose with hands up in a surrendering gesture. “Take me with you,” she said. “I’ll pay whatever you want for transport.”

Boba sheathed his blaster. “I’m not a shuttle service,” he said. He pushed the cuffed lieutenant toward the exit.

“ _Please_.”

Something desperate in her voice stopped him at the door.

“I need to get out of here. I need to get off this planet. They, they won’t let me leave. I’ll do whatever you want, please.”

Boba turned and really looked at her.

The girl was dressed in little more than a white bikini draped with beads. Her blue skin had a greenish cast in the dim light, and her cheeks were gaunt. She was beautiful, probably bred for appearance, probably owned by the establishment for the use of its guests. Why she thought he would help her, he had no idea.

“You know who I am, right?” Boba asked.

“You’re the bounty hunter Boba Fett. You’re infamous. They won’t argue with you if you take me away.” Her raised hands lowered and spread as if to say, ‘why not?’ “Come on. Rescue a damsel in distress.”

Boba snorted. Rescuing damsels was so far outside his normal operations that the idea was truly laughable. Never in his life had his appearance meant anything other than death and destruction. But this girl, for some reason, probably desperation, saw a savior. And her pleading half-smile, the ironic tint to her voice as she bartered for rescue, spoke to a dark sense of humor that he appreciated. And maybe, maybe he liked the idea of doing the right thing for once. “All right,” he said. “Come on.”

She exhaled in relief and followed him through the halls and up the stairs to the exit.

The bouncer stopped Boba at the door upon catching sight of the Twi’lek. “She stays.”

Boba didn’t even glance back at her. “This bounty is wanted for stealing trade secrets to sell, and he was kissing up on your girl here. Might have spilled some of those secrets trying to impress her. You know how it is. Client wants no loose ends. She’s coming with me.”

“That will cost you. 500 credits.”

Boba dug out the money and dropped it into the bouncer’s hand. The girl had better be good for it. At the bouncer’s nod, Boba took his two companions through the city streets to the shipyard where the  _ Slave IV _ was docked. She was the same class as his father’s ship, the original _Slave_ , but his was a dangerous profession, and things happened. He had to replace his ship every now and then. He wasn’t sentimental about it.

“Up,” he ordered the quarry, and the girl took it as an order for her, too, ascending the ramp. He shoved the quarry into the hull’s cage and locked it, and then he climbed the ladder to the cockpit. The girl, with a lack of any other instruction, followed.

The cockpit lay on its back, facing a transparisteel ceiling. In flight, the ship turned ninety degrees, so while docked, the whole interior was oriented upward. Boba slid into the pilot’s chair and strapped himself down before beginning the launch sequence. “I’d sit down if I were you,” he told the girl.

She looked around for another chair and, not finding one, sank to the floor.

The floor was about to become a wall. As Boba took off, the  _ Slave IV _ tilted forward into its proper orientation. From below deck, a thunk could be heard as the quarry fell. Boba smiled to himself. That was the best part of takeoff and landing.

With a surprised “Oh,” the girl slid forward toward the new ground. She landed as gracefully as could be expected and braced herself for further directional changes. There wouldn’t be any. The ship’s artificial gravity engaged, and its position was set.

As soon as Boba left the planet’s atmosphere, he plotted a course for Hutt Space and urged the ship into hyperdrive. It would fly on its own now. He unbuckled and swiveled to face the girl.

Now that they were in space, and he was facing the prospect of ferrying a passenger, the absolute foolishness of his decision caught up to him. Gods of the Great Vacuum, what had he been thinking? What kind of accommodations would she be expecting? This was a single-person craft. Boba worked alone. And as an investment, a freed slave was a poor one. “I don’t suppose you possess the 500 credits you owe me, on top of food and transportation fees?”

The girl’s gaze flickered over his helmet, unsure where to settle. “No. I don’t have any money.” She crossed the cramped cockpit in a few sashaying steps and knelt in his lap, legs on either side of his. “But I’m sure there are other ways I can pay you back.”

She was even prettier up close. Almond-shaped eyes dark as space, lekku hanging to her waist, exotic. In place of ears, she had cones, and her canines were pointed a bit sharper than a human’s. Beaded chains hung from her neck to her wrists. If Boba had been anyone else, he might have been tempted to take her up on her offer. But he was used to offers of this sort. His captured quarries bargained for freedom with every tool at their disposal, and Boba was used to tuning out the pitiful begging. “What makes you think I’d be interested in a deal like that?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re a man, aren’t you?”

Boba laughed, laughed harder than he had in a while at the absurdity of her assumption. “Haven’t you heard the stories, sweetheart? I’m more machine than man, ruthless and heartless. I only care about credits,” he eased her off his lap, “and that’s how you’ll be paying me back.”

She took the rejection well, shrugging. “I promise I’ll get them somehow.”

Boba stood. “I’ll make sure of it. For now, you can start paying off the debt by helping out around the ship. We’ll be in hyperspace for a few cycles. Come on.” He led her through the ship. He might as well get used to her, since he was stuck with her at least until he dropped off this quarry. “The fresher is through there.” They stepped past a door and to his quarters. “There’s only one bunk, and it’s mine.” He dug around a drawer and pulled out a stack of spare blankets and a pillow. “You can sleep wherever you can find a spot.” He handed her the stack, and she nodded.

“I’m Yani, by the way.”

Right. He hadn’t asked her name. “Boba,” he replied. But she knew that. Everyone knew him. Everyone in the galaxy knew the legends, the horror stories of the things he’d done, none of them exaggerated.

She hugged the pile of bedding tight to her chest, appearing lost all of a sudden, like the weight of her circumstances was falling on her shoulders all at once. She was at the mercy of a fearsome bounty hunter of legend—taken out of one tragedy and dropped into another. “Could I… Do you have a spare shirt or something?”

Boba averted his eyes, reminded of her near nakedness. “Of course.” He rifled through more drawers and found a couple of tunics and a brown robe, loaded them onto the pile in her arms. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do until they touched down at a habited planet where she could acquire some women’s clothing. Something else to come from his pocket. He bit back a sigh, strangely less bothered by the prospect of spending more money on her.

Yani nudged his arm gently before she left, the most she could do with her arms full. “Thank you for saving me.”

Boba hung in his room for several minutes, pondering the strange turn his life had taken. He had a female passenger on board with no set drop-off point or guarantee that she could repay him for the trouble. She was a liability—by every account of himself he had ever given, he should have left her behind.

But, when she’d asked him to rescue her, her expression had been one of such optimistic anticipation, like she believed he really would save her, and that belief had translated into reality when he found that he _wanted_ , just once, to be the person she saw him as. Boba was so used to fear. No one had ever looked at him with hope before.


	2. Fear

Yani made a nest of blankets deep in the ship’s storage space. Picturing how the ship had looked from the outside, then flipping it ninety degrees in her mind, she thought she was down at the tip of the odd protrusion, near where the guns were mounted. She sat back on her knees, appraising the makeshift bed. It was far from the worst place she’d slept. It might even be called cozy, tucked between a few crates of supplies. Yeah, things could be much worse.

She changed into one of Boba’s shirts. It was black, soft, and nearly long enough on her to be a dress. Boba wasn’t the tallest of men, but she was still a hand width shorter. Wrapped in the flowing robe on top of it all, cinched at the waist, she felt good and covered up for the first time in a while.

Yani climbed a ladder out of the storage space. Maybe it was a trick of the artificial gravity, but she felt light as air. She was free. She was free and on her way… somewhere. Anywhere in the galaxy had to be better than the spice den where she’d lived for the past four years, dark and hazy with smoke. It was nothing like her current surroundings. Boba’s ship was clean to the point of obsession, everything stacked and clipped into place so that the ship’s movement couldn’t dislodge any supplies.

She wanted to find Boba and ask what she could do to help him (it probably involved more rigorous cleaning of the already-spotless spacecraft). She brainstormed ways to earn credits so that she could pay him back. Maybe they would land on planets where she could pick up some work. And once she’d earned enough to cancel the debt…

Well, she could cross that bridge when she came to it. So what if she had no clue what to do with herself now? At least she _had_ a future to worry about.

Yani didn’t see Boba in the cockpit, so she tried the hull next. No, the only person there was the man from the spice den, in a barren cage. She didn’t remember his name. Randall? Raymond?

He caught sight of her and sat up from where he was slumped against the wall, blinking crust away from his eyes. “Hey, I know you.”

She didn’t answer. Maybe Boba was in his room. She turned to go look for him, but Mr. R-name called out to her.

“Wait, don’t go! I just want someone to talk to. You and I are in this together, right?”

She faced him again. “You’re in a cage, and I’m not.”

He grinned. “True. But you’re not exactly free to leave, either. We’re out in space. There’s nowhere to go. Even planetside, you’re gonna be indebted to him, right?”

For however long it took to amass 500-plus credits. Actually, they hadn’t settled upon a number. He could charge whatever he liked for room and board. She didn’t have much bargaining room.

“So we two are both at the mercy of Boba Fett.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Boba Fett. It almost makes me feel important, that they sent _him_ after me. Mostly it makes me feel doomed.” He stood and leaned against the cage bars, turned horizontal now that the ship was in flight. His voice lowered conspiratorially. “You should have heard the way he spoke to me earlier, giving me this rundown of how things would work now that I was his prisoner. He almost begged me to try and kill myself, to ‘damage the goods’—told me a few of the ways other people had tried. He stopped them all. It was like he was getting off on it.”

Yani swallowed. This was the person she’d entrusted herself to on a spur-of-the-moment gamble.

“So what _does_ he get off on?” The man watched her. “You would know, wouldn’t you? The infamous Boba Fett can’t be gentle. So what’s he into? Choking? Knives? Sticking blasters places they don’t belong?”

Yani breathed hard. How had she not considered this? How hadn’t she stopped to mull it over for one fucking second before throwing herself at Boba? Of all the creatures she could have sought help from. Back in the spice den, she’d been thinking, ‘Here’s someone who would make even the owners quake in fear. Someone like that could protect me,’ not whether she might need protecting from him once they were out.

And then, and then she’d been so caught up with gratitude. She had considered herself safe and let her guard down at the worst possible time. She’d been thinking of his _broad_ shoulders and _big_ hands instead of the legends surrounding him that all ended in blood.

Oh, she’d been so stupid. She’d placed herself in the hands of a man known for violence, who had named his ship _Slave_ , and then offered him her _body_. Was she a masochist or a fucking imbecile? Thank every version of heaven that he hadn’t accepted. But what if he changed his mind and decided he wanted her?

Yani hurried away from the man chuckling in the cage, seeking her refuge of blankets deep in the ship. On the way, she rounded a corner and nearly collided with Boba. She flinched, eyes wide with fear.

Boba stepped back as if he’d been slapped. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!”

Boba didn’t believe her. He just stared, helmet blank but body quivering with tension. He clenched his fists then released them with a puff of breath. “You were the first person who didn’t look at me like that,” he admitted in a quiet voice. Then he turned and stalked back to the cockpit.

Remorse flooded Yani along with the sudden return of common sense, reminding her that Boba had never taken advantage of her or even hinted that he wanted to. She felt terrible. She hadn’t expected she could hurt Boba’s feelings that badly; she hadn’t known he had feelings to hurt. And that was the point. The cold, cruel mask he presented to the world probably kept him safe, but it would be a lonely kind of safety.

Yani found him seated in the pilot’s chair, watching the glowing streaks of hyperspace. She announced her presence with a knock on the wall. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He didn’t reply or even turn his head.

Frustrated, she said, “Look, you can’t blame me for believing the only narrative about you that exists to the galaxy.”

“Right.”

When he made no further reply, Yani left.


	3. The Passenger

Boba couldn’t help how sick he felt, deep in his stomach. The way she’d looked at him, like she was cornered prey, arms raising instinctively to ward him off, it had conveyed such a familiar terror—and was he a hunter all the time, not just when he intended to be? Was ‘hunter’ coded so deeply into his DNA that every other creature could sense it, know to run, hide, pray he didn’t find you?

It had felt like such a betrayal. Boba had wanted to snarl and stalk forward and give her something real to be afraid of, a hand around her throat to show her what being hunted by him truly felt like so she could never confuse the sensation again. But that would have confirmed all her worst thoughts about him. There would have been no chance for redemption then.

He had helped her. He’d done the right thing for once, the good thing, and rescued her when she’d asked for rescue. Whatever shit she had gone through, being aboard his ship with him couldn’t possibly be worse, could it?

Could it?

Then she had apologized, and he couldn’t bear the grief in her voice. Then she’d snapped that he couldn’t blame her for believing the tales they told about him, and he couldn’t because most of them were true. He’d pretended to be a man of ruthlessness and greed so often that he’d become that person. At this point, his actions weren’t just an act; they were who he was. He couldn’t blame her for being unable to see past them to a deeper, better self that he wasn’t convinced even existed.

Except, except that he’d _wanted_ her to.

His vambrace beeped at him, reminding him that it was time to sleep. One could quickly lose all semblance of schedules out in space if one weren’t careful. He stood, fetched a ration bar from the supply, and went in search of his passenger.

He found Yani at the absolute tip of the craft, nestled among crates of supplies. He tried to intrude in her space as little as possible, not wanting to give her any more reasons to fear him, so he kept one hand on the ladder and tossed the bar to her. “Here,” he said. She caught it. “Eat, and then get some sleep.” He climbed without looking back.

His own bed was a hollowed space set lengthwise into a wall, just tall enough to sit up in and barely wide enough to lay comfortably. With the press of a button, the side that opened onto the ship closed off. He shuffled around and tried to find a comfortable position.

There was no logical reason that his bed should feel even lonelier than usual.

—

She must have heard him moving around the ship in the morning, and she joined him in the upper decks, dressed the same as the day before.

For his part, he hadn’t donned the armor, preferring comfort while they were just traveling. He hoped she wouldn’t make a big deal out of seeing him out of armor for the first time, but of course, that had been wishful thinking.

Yani stared, pink lips parted in shock.

The Sarlacc’s stomach acid hadn’t been kind to him, leaving him scarred all over his body. He remembered it seeping under the helmet, burning in the dark as he screamed. “Done gawking?” he asked. Well, if she had wanted her knight in shining armor to be _handsome_ on top of it all, she could have damn well waited around for someone else.

“Sorry.” Yani ducked her head and blushed. He hadn’t realized she could blush, with her blue skin. It appeared as a faint darkening to her cheeks.

He turned away and busied himself searching the pantry. “What do you take in the morning? Caf? Tea? Alcohol?”

“Never really had a choice. Spice, I guess.”

“You an addict? I won’t judge.”

“I rarely use, but I’ve been inhaling secondhand smoke for a while.”

He nodded. He had some spice stores around here somewhere, gifted after a brief stint as a smuggler, that he could dig up if the need arose. For now, she could probably live off caf. He fixed his usual cup along with another for her, handed her the mug.

She mimicked his posture, leaning against a wall and sipping. “So, are you going to kick me out at our first stop?”

Boba almost sputtered at the idea. “No!” Then he realized how dramatic his reaction had been, she was raising her eyebrows at him, and he hurried to elucidate his thoughts. “Our first stop is Nal Hutta to drop off this quarry, and there’s no way I’m leaving you in that viper wasp nest to fend for yourself.” Where he would leave her, he had no clue. His next steps were murky. He could take another contract from the Hutts, or search up open bounties… snatching jobs under the Guild’s nose was always fun. Or perhaps it was time to take a break and resupply.

On that note, he sifted through the food stores. They were looking a little sparse, especially if he was to be feeding two people now on top of the current hard merchandise.

“Boba?” Yani asked from behind him. “Can I use the shower?”

“It’s just a sonic, but go ahead.” It would give him time alone to think, come up with a plan for after Nal Hutta.

She left her caf cup behind. Boba peered into it after she left. Drained. Pushing down a startling rush of affection, Boba added ‘More caf’ to his mental shopping list.

—

Having a passenger onboard would take some getting used to. Half of the time, he was hyper-aware of her presence, like a glowing dot on a tracker pad alerting him to her exact location as she moved around the ship. The other half of the time, he forgot she was there and would suddenly be reminded when she appeared.

Once, he stopped dead in the middle of the hall upon seeing her, shocked again at the sight of another person on his ship, and he didn’t realize he was frozen until she edged around him.

“I guess I’ll just… squeeze past you,” she said, humored. And then she was gone before he could apologize or stammer out a belated explanation.

He didn’t know what to make of her. He didn’t know what to do with her, except feed her when he fed himself and try to ignore the way her close proximity made his body heat up. It was ridiculous how physically she was affecting him. The longer she was aboard, the worse it got. His palms began to sweat as if he were some distracted, overwrought teenager who couldn’t handle sharing a space with a woman.

He thought he was going insane until Yani very tentatively asked if it felt kind of muggy in here. She followed him into the cockpit, where he pulled up humidity readings, and thank the gods, there was a _reason_ he was getting all sweaty. “The water reclaimer is acting up.” He tried not to sound too relieved. He’d never been glad to discover equipment malfunction before. It wasn’t the girl that was affecting him, at all. He was fine.

“Is that bad?” she asked. “Are we going to run out of water and die?” She said it so casually, too, as if the prospect of death by dehydration didn’t overly bother her.

Boba snorted. “Probably not.” But if he couldn’t fix it, they would be in for an uncomfortable final day of travel. He grabbed his toolbox and descended to the bowels of his ship. Yani trailed behind and hung nearby as he got on his back and slid under an overhang of machinery. His back protested the movement. He was getting too old for this. “Can you hand me the little light from the toolbox?”

Yani rooted around then placed it in his outstretched hand.

He clipped it to a random piece of metal and flicked it on so he could see what he was doing. Almost immediately, the problem made itself apparent. An internal cooling fan had come loose and was blowing directly on the water reclaimer’s sensor, so the water reclaimer was reading that the ship was too cool and dry and trying to counteract by upping the humidity. He just had to fix the fan.

“Anything I can do to help?” Yani asked.

“Are you a mechanic?”

“No.”

“Then no.” Let’s see, first he had to stop the fan so that it didn’t chop off his fingers while he screwed it back in place. “Actually, you can hand me the…” What was its kriffing name? “It pulses to momentarily halt machinery.”

“This?” She set something in his palm.

“This is a laser-caliper. No. It’s green.”

“You don’t have to sound so snappy about it. I can’t read minds.”

Why did he even bother? “Is there anything you _can_ do?” he asked. It seemed to him that he could have found the tool quicker on his own.

“I can suck dick.”

As Boba’s mind tried to process Yani’s statement, his thoughts of fans and screwdrivers faded, replaced with an image of Yani kneeling over him and unbuckling his belt. Swallowing, he willed the image away.

She was going to be the death of him.


	4. Incongruity

Yani didn’t know what to think of Boba Fett. He was a bounty hunter who gave “notorious” new meaning, and yet she kept catching him in moments so incongruous with his impersonal reputation—moments that she was sure no one else could have seen, or they would be all that people talked about. They were all Yani could think about. Boba Fett, unmasked and spritzing his consol with a spray bottle before wiping it down. Boba Fett, licking peanut butter off a spoon.

She loved the way he looked without the helmet. His scars had startled her at first, but now she was unbothered by them. They lent him a rugged appearance that was more than a little sexy. Combined with his square jaw and piercing eyes, the way the corner of his mouth twitched when he found something humorous, Yani understood why he preferred to remain helmeted around strangers. He couldn’t have everyone who met him becoming enchanted with his humanity.

“We’ll be dropping out of hyperspace soon,” Boba told her, interrupting her musings. He was armored-up again, the helmet tucked under an arm.

She had to physically restrain herself from saying something foolish and sentimental like, ‘Oh, do leave it off a little longer.’

“And then it’s just a few minutes to Nal Hutta,” Boba continued, unaware of her struggle to bite her tongue. “I want you to remain hidden the whole time we’re there. I don’t plan on letting anyone aboard, but just in case, I don’t want them catching sight of you.”

“All right.” She didn’t question this. She trusted his judgment, at least when it came to Hutts and bounty hunting clients. So she followed him through the ship without a word, even as he led her into his room and opened the panel concealing his cot. When it was obvious he wanted her to climb into his bed, she didn’t question, just blinked at him stupidly.

He shifted from one foot to the other. “It’s the comfiest hiding spot I could think of.”

She still didn’t speak, mind stuck on _Boba’s bed. He wants me in his bed._

And oh, he was regretting this now. “Look, it’s this or a crate.”

She climbed into the cubbyhole.

Boba shut the panel, cutting off all but cracks of light. “Don’t open for anyone but me. I’ll come get you when we’re back in hyperspace.” Judging by the slight modulation of his voice, the helmet was on again.

Yani listened to his footsteps retreat, wondering how long she was supposed to lay here and stare at the darkened ceiling, close enough to touch if she stretched. She fidgeted, trying desperately to think of anything other than Boba, what he wore to bed, what sounds he’d make as he shifted to find a comfortable position, what his face looked like while he slept. She turned her head to the side, and now she could feel his pillow against her cheek, and more than that, she could _smell_ him.

Yani closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose, drinking in the heady, masculine scent that was unmistakably Boba. Fnarling hell, she was so weak. Pathetically lusting after a man who probably saw her as an inconvenience at most. But here, lying supine in his bed, surrounded by the smell of him, it was so easy to picture. How could she not imagine Boba’s weight settling heavy on top of her, hips pressing into hers, his breath tickling her neck? She pictured his gritty voice pitched even lower as he asked how she wanted it: slow and savoring or quick and dirty.

With difficulty, Yani shoved those thoughts aside. She was getting too worked up, and masturbating in Boba Fett’s bed while she was supposed to be hiding was in the top ten stupidest ideas of her life. She turned onto her side, pulled the blanket around her shoulders, and hunkered down to wait.

—

Boba knocked on the wall near his bunk. “You can come out now.”

Yani felt around for a button and found one near her head. At its pressing, the panel slid open. Yani blinked in the light. She wanted to make a comment like, ‘Your bed is so much nicer than mine,’ followed by, ‘Maybe we should share.’ Or the even more daring, ‘I wasn’t finished napping. Come lay down with me.’

But Boba was already leaving, and the moment was gone.

Yani scurried after him. “What now?” she asked. Was he finally going to boot her out?

“The bounty from that ex-lieutenant will tide us over for a while. We’re taking a break to resupply.”

_Us_ , he’d said. _We_.

“There’s a little planet nearby where I’ve restocked in the past. Mostly humanoids. You’ll like it.”

The planet was tiny, one of those with a name made of numbers that would barely get a dot on most maps. The surface was covered in scrapyards. Boba landed in a hanger that looked surprisingly well-kept, and the woman who owned it greeted Boba with enthusiastic affection.

“Fett! Haven’t seen you ‘round these parts in a while! How long are you staying?”

“Uncertain. A few cycles at least.” He handed her a stack of credits. “Mind if I dock the ship here?”

“Never!” The woman gave Yani nearly as huge of a smile. “And who is this pretty thing?”

Yani had been trying to guess her age (40s?) and relationship with Boba, figure out if she should be jealous. But the smile put her at ease. “I’m Yani,” she said.

“I’d prefer if you didn’t go telling everyone that I’ve got a woman traveling with me,” Boba said.

The hanger lady’s eyes sparkled, and she mimed zipping her lips. “By the way, do you need any repairs done?”

“You can look the ship over, but I don’t know of any glaring issues,” Boba said. Then he told Yani, “Come on.”

She followed him out of the hanger and down the street. They were walking with the flow of traffic toward a city center, perhaps. “So who was that?” Yani asked.

“I worked with her husband on a mission, during which I betrayed and killed him. It turns out he was abusive. Now I’m his widow’s favorite person in the galaxy.”

Betrayed and killed his teammate. That was the kind of story Yani was used to hearing about Boba Fett, and she had to stop herself from visibly shivering. The ending, though, was different. That woman seemed more than grateful to Boba, but it sounded like his intentions hadn’t been pure, even if the results happened to be positive… Oh, _ethics_ were tough to contemplate when Boba Fett was involved. The man from the stories and the man beside her, who she’d seen unhelmeted fixing her a cup of caf in the morning, were so incongruous. She needed to know more details before making a final judgment of him.

“There’s a market up ahead,” Boba said. “I thought you could shop for some clothes for yourself. I’ll be nearby keeping an eye on you, but maybe it’s better if I don’t hang on your tail and scare the shopkeepers.”

Yani was glad she wouldn’t have to steal his clothing any longer, but, “I don’t have any money.”

Boba eased a pouch of credits into her hand, not looking at her. “Don’t worry about it.”

She wasn’t brave enough to ask why, why would a man known for stinginess be so generous and murmur, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ so softly? Why her? Yani’s mental perception of Boba veered every time he spoke. She couldn’t get a handle on him. “You don’t have to…”

“They’re my credits. This is as good a use for them as any. You know, people are always speculating about what I spend my massive earnings on. ‘You charge such outrageous fees, Fett. Where are the credits going? Toward liquor? Women?’”

“Where _do_ they go?”

“To upkeep of the operation, mostly, though I know that’s not as exciting as me having a hidden vice. Weapons need restocking; informants need bribing. The rest I hoard. Call it a retirement plan.” His voice lowered. “To tell you the truth, I live in fear that everything will fall apart on me in a moment, and I’ll need to run.”

So he stockpiled credits as a failsafe against an indifferent galaxy. Yani was grateful that he’d confided in her, but she wanted to lighten the mood. “No secret vices, though?” she teased. “No guilty pleasures?”

“I don’t feel guilt.”

It sounded like a joke. Maybe an old one, maybe more ironic than funny, but Yani huffed a breath of laughter anyway.

Boba turned to look at her, and she could almost picture the quirk of his lips behind the helmet.

The market was open to the air, cluttered with life. Cloth awnings covered stalls and food carts. Some of the overhangs led into actual buildings with booths in which to try on clothing.

Yani couldn’t keep the grin off her face as she shopped, sifting through racks of secondhand clothes. Her freedom to choose, to pick out what she’d like to wear and pay for it herself (even if the credits she spent weren’t really hers), was exhilarating. She felt in control of her life for the first time in a while. If she wanted to linger at one store and pass over the next, she could. She bartered in Huttese, sometimes bringing down the price of an article.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught flashes of Boba’s armor in the crowd, making good on his promise to linger near and keep her safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who's been leaving kudos and comments! Comments make my day, so keep them coming!


	5. Dinner

Boba brought Yani back to his ship to drop off her purchases, and she changed into a long-sleeved tunic and pants, along with the short boots that she’d bought then immediately donned. She’d been barefoot until then.

Boba suggested that they go out for dinner. It would be nice to spend more time off the ship and get a hot meal in them. He led her to a restaurant that he remembered having lots of little nooks where he could take off the helmet and feel comfortable to eat in relative privacy. The restaurant had a bar level below where there might be a card game or two going. Maybe they could get a drink after their meal.

He led Yani to a corner booth, ordered before taking off the helmet, leaned back and sighed.

“You look astonishingly run-down.”

“Thanks,” he grumbled. But secretly, he loved the blunt way she spoke her mind, even when she pointed out uncomfortable truths about himself. He  _ was _ run-down, only noticed now that he’d taken a moment to breathe. Life was… tiring. He could get lost in a bone-deep weariness if he let himself.

So he didn’t. He leaned crossed arms on the table and focused on Yani. She was seated closer to the booth’s opening, peering at the other patrons. “You’ve been here before?” she asked.

“Yes. I like this planet, so far off the map that even criminals avoid it. No one’s tried to kill me here, yet.”

“That’s a hilarious metric. Do you rate all planets that way?” Her voice lowered in a gruff imitation of his own. “Three assassination attempts on Mon Cala. Five on Lothal. Avoid that sector in the future.”

Her guess was close enough to the way he actually thought that he had to stifle a laugh.

The food arrived: some local bird slathered in sauce, with a starchy side and a few greens. Yani shoveled food into her mouth with the ardent desperation of someone with many siblings who’d learned that they had to grab and consume quickly if they wanted a fair share. Or, more likely, her eating habits had resulted from her time as a slave.

“Slow down,” Boba said. “It’s dead. It can’t fly away from you.”

“Sorry.” Sheepishly, Yani slackened her pace.

Boba understood the anxiety of food insecurity. If he had his way, he’d never let her feel that fear again. He picked up a menu and browsed the dessert options, thinking he would order her something else.

She was so close, this was all so normal, and Boba found himself relaxing, his mind wandering the way he only let it when he was confident in his safety. If he leaned back, he could conceivably drape an arm across the top of her seat. Would that be too banal? Too possessive? Or might she lean into his touch?

Before he could decide, Yani excused herself to use the refresher, and the opportunity vanished.

When Yani returned, however, she seemed troubled. She tried to hide it, stabbing at her meat pointedly, but the luster from before was gone.

“What?” Boba asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“Yani, what’s wrong?”

Then she met his eyes, doleful and… apologetic? “Someone slipped this to me.” She handed him a scrap of durasheet upon which was written: ‘Do you need help?’

Boba couldn’t wrench his eyes away from the message. Some well-meaning person had seen him with Yani and assumed she needed rescuing. They’d seen Boba Fett walk into an establishment with a woman and wondered what in the universe was going on and come to the conclusion that she needed help. To be fair, she was a Twi’lek woman, and they were commonly trafficked, and part of him was grateful to this stranger for their bravery in standing up to the legendary Boba Fett because if Yani  _ had _ been in trouble, he would have been glad for this good citizen’s interference. Still, the assumption stung.

The words faded from the durasheet, temporary.

She  _ wasn’t _ in trouble. Was she? Did she feel free to leave him, or did she still feel like her debt chained her to his side and his whims? He could see how, in that case, every credit he spent on her might come across as binding her even closer to him, might feel like walls closing in around her. He hadn’t intended it that way at all.

He crumpled up the durasheet. He stood.

“Boba.” Yani’s voice was pleading, but he couldn’t even look at her.

“I’m going to go play cards,” he said, flinging down some credits to pay for the meal. “Finish your dinner. Or take this opportunity to run away. I don’t care.” He grabbed his helmet and stalked off down the stairs to the darker basement of the building, wondering if this was the last he would ever see of her.

There was a sabacc game going in the corner, but Boba didn’t join. He went straight to the bar instead and sank onto a stool; he ordered a hull stripper, something powerful, and downed a third of it in a few gulps. He would hang out here for a while and give Yani the chance to leave if she wished.

The worst part, the worst part was that he knew his reputation as a monster had been earned. Maybe not trafficking or abusing women specifically, but what was one more sin added to the list? He couldn’t fault people for assuming that no one in his proximity was there for a good reason.

This was his legacy: mistrust and fear. Had this been what his father wanted, when he passed on his trade to his young son, taught him the ins and outs of bounty hunting? Or had he died before coming to the nuance, some caveat that could have clarified how to do it all with honor, or at least without leaving atrocities in his wake? Maybe Jango would have told him some secret way to live with himself, or even, “You don’t have to go into this profession if you don’t want to.”

But Jango had died before his instruction could complete, leaving a young Boba alone and floundering. And what else could Boba have done but follow in those footsteps, not just follow, but be _better_ —stronger, more callous, more daring, make a name for himself that would be known the galaxy over, distinguishing Boba from the other clones? Until he could charge what he pleased for bounties and never have to worry about going hungry again. Until everyone recognized his helmet and knew it as a harbinger of doom. Until he couldn’t walk into a restaurant with a woman without people assuming the worst.

He had lied when he told Yani that he didn’t feel guilt. Guilt was a serpent coiled around his neck, and sometimes he could tease it into loosening its chokehold enough for him to ignore it, but it was always present. Threatening.

What was Yani thinking, up in the main room? Was she even still here? Was she thankful for the chance to finally be rid of him? It wasn’t much of a chance. If he  _ really _ wanted to help her leave, he’d put her on a safe planet closer to the Core, with enough funds to tide her over while she found work. Not abandon her on this backwater junkheap without even letting her collect her things first.

Boba dropped his head into his hands. He was doing this all wrong. He shouldn’t have dropped the decision on her out of the blue. At least this could be a test of how desperate she was to escape him. If she didn’t bolt now, at least he knew she wasn’t thinking about leaving at every opportunity. Maybe.

What did he want with Yani, anyway? Why did the prospect of letting her go fill him with such visceral dread? He knew the answer, or at least his body did, blood pumping quick and eager every time she was near. He wanted her.

He forced himself through drilled thought patterns. What was the best-case scenario for Yani staying onboard? She eventually let him touch her, let him bury his cock in her pulsing heat, let him taste how sweet her kiss would be. She fell in love with him and stayed forever, and they all lived happily ever after.

Boba snorted and took another long drink. A fairy tale.

What was the worst that could happen? She never developed an attraction to him but stuck around anyway, relieving his loneliness for a little while with her company.

No, he corrected, the worst-case scenario would be that he got her killed. He shouldn’t risk it. He shouldn’t risk _her_.

Boba nearly jumped out of his seat when Yani touched his arm. He faced her worried expression and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for running out on you like that.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I get it.”

And though he’d half-resolved already to explain his plan to bring her to a Core World, he found himself saying, “Stay. Please.”

Yani’s concern broke into relief, and he was instantly glad he’d said it. “I’d like to stick around a little longer, if you’ll have me.”

He squeezed her wrist—not quite a hand hold, but close enough that he hoped to convey affection, and _Yes, I’ll have you_ , and _Thank you for not seeing a monster when you look at me._


	6. Resupply

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started enjoying writing in the Star Wars universe a lot more when I finally gave myself permission to make things up, like fun new locations. I hope all the gravitational stuff makes sense.

Yani thought that they’d be staying on the little planet longer, but Boba left the next morning, only sticking around long enough to refuel.

“Kriffing lines at the spaceport are huge,” he said by way of explanation.

Maybe he was eager to leave after the incident at the restaurant. It had affected him deeply. Did he know that Yani didn’t feel like she was being kidnapped or held hostage? She hoped so.

“We’re going to a port nearby that sees lots of traffic,” Boba said, “so it caters to creatures making long trips. It’ll sell packaged food and things like that. By the way, have you ever traveled in space for any length of time?”

“Not really,” she replied. No trip longer than a couple of days.

Boba nodded. “It takes some getting used to. It’s a lot of sitting around while the ship flies itself. You’ll want to pick up some things to keep you occupied.”

So he was planning on keeping her around then. That was good. She didn’t know where else to go, didn’t particularly want to leave.

The port was a massive space station floating in orbit around a jungle planet. Peering out of the _Slave IV’s_ viewport, Yani could barely comprehend the size of it. It was shaped like a thick circle, spinning so that the buildings on the rim would have simulated gravity. Hundreds of ships docked in the center.

They flew past the line for refueling, and as Boba had predicted, it was enormous. She was glad that they’d refueled before they left.

Boba requested permission to land, and traffic control directed him to an open spot. The ship eased through the magnetic field that separated the air-filled, pressurized hanger from the vacuum of space. Boba gently disengaged the _Slave’s_ artificial gravity even as he maneuvered it onto its back to land. The hangar’s docking machinery clipped into place around it.

Yani unfastened the straps securing her to the wall, which was now a floor, if she considered her surroundings in terms of “up” and “down.” But really, with a lack of gravitational tether, those designations didn’t seem helpful or relevant anymore. She visualized the _Slave’s_ interior anew, where every side was a wall, and the efficient use of space—every free nook containing equipment or supplies—made sense. When she was floating around like this, she could reach or orient herself in any direction.

The cramped nature of the ship’s rooms and halls was a benefit now, keeping her from getting stuck floating in the center of a chamber. She pulled herself along with handholds, giggling at the freedom of weightlessness.

Boba powered down the ship and unbuckled from the pilot’s chair. He pulled himself through the ship expertly, Yani trailing and bumping along behind him, until he reached the main hull. “Here.” Boba unlatched and pulled open a drawer, extracting a pair of what looked like thin shoe soles with straps.

Yani kept hold of a handle on the wall while Boba fastened the soles around her shoes. He managed the buckles even in his leather gloves. Then he wrapped a band with a simple slider around her wrist.

“These will help you walk around in low gravity,” he explained. “You can use the slider to adjust their magnetism.”

Yani pushed up the slider and set her feet on the floor. With a metallic _tink_ , they stuck. She played around with the magnetism until she found a setting that kept her in place but let her easily lift her feet when she wanted to take a step. “What about you?” she asked since Boba hadn’t put on a pair himself.

“Built into my shoes,” he said. He fiddled with settings on his vambrace, and his boots became magnetized. He opened the hull door and led the way down the ship’s ramp.

The spaceport’s hangar looked even bigger from the inside. Ships of all shapes and sizes surrounded Yani, and the beings they belonged to came in even more varieties. Humanoids with red skin and horns spoke with insect-like creatures whose chitinous legs tapped out scuttling patterns on the metal ground.

Yani couldn’t help staring at the spaceships as she and Boba made their way along a ramp toward the outer edge of the hangar. One was sleek and silver, another blue and segmented like a Rishi eel. Above her, upside down, a female human strolled along an identical ramp with similar magnetized shoes, her hair billowing in the zero gravity.

“Are you worried about your ship being stolen or something?” Yani asked Boba. They were leaving it alone in a bustling spaceport.

“You should always anticipate the worst,” he replied, “but I’m not too worried. This place has good security, and it’s generally considered neutral ground for the lawful, criminal, and semi-criminal, as some bounty hunters like to think of themselves. Every spacer can agree to keep a truce when hot showers are on the table.”

Yani lit up. “A real shower? With water?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention?” Boba sounded like he was smiling and like he hadn’t forgotten to mention the fact at all but rather kept it secret to surprise her.

After ten minutes or so of walking, they came close enough to the edge of the spinning circle that Yani felt a tug pulling her downward. Down was in front, and just when she felt like she was going to start falling forward despite the grip of her shoes, the ground turned into a ladder, and she and Boba crouched, turned around, and began to climb down into a tunnel. Across the tunnel there was another ladder, the continuation of the ramp that had been above them in the hangar.

The gravity increased as they descended rung by rung until they emerged in a wide-open stretch of buildings that must have been the outer ring of the port. If Yani looked far enough, she could see the curvature of the ground tilting up.

They could walk normally now without the assistance of magnetized soles. They headed for the showers first, which were pay-per-minute and expensive, but Yani didn’t protest when Boba told her she could buy a fifteen-minute one. She stood in the tiny stall as hot water scalded the grime from her skin, luxurious after years of sonics or washing off in tepid baths. She stayed under the spray until the water shut off on its own.

They headed toward a shopping district next, passing rows of restaurants on the way. At the entrance of a huge section of building, like a warehouse, Boba grabbed a floating cart from a stack and coded it to follow him. Shoppers crowded the pathways. Dozens of merchants called out prices from behind tables of goods. Each merchant’s spot was taped off on the ground, and they stayed religiously within their lines.

“Fritzle fries! Hot and fresh!” yelled a man with a deep fryer.

“Just ten credits,” came another voice across the way. “Just ten measly credits, and you too can own a thermo-insulated pillowcase. Why would you need a thermo-insulated pillowcase, you ask? Why, to keep your head warm while you dream of sailing through clouds on a solar glider.”

Boba headed for tables crammed with small boxes. He inspected several tables before stopping at a third. “I want to stock up on ration bars,” he told Yani. “Try some of these kinds and see which you like.”

The merchant was eager to hand over samples of half a dozen flavors of bars. Yani chose her two favorites—one with chocolate and one with dried fruit—and Boba picked a third kind, buying stacks of all three and loading them onto the floating cart.

So it progressed. They ignored the merchants hawking luxury goods or knick-knacks and focused on the ones selling helpful rations, and there were plenty in a place like this where every customer was a space traveler. Boba bought meal powder that turned water into shakes, rehydratable bread (rehydratable lots of things, actually), and caf packets. He also bought first-aid supplies like bandages and several forms of bacta.

Yani kept pulling away to look at new stalls, some filled with exotic potted plants, others with candies in strange colors and shapes. One stall, owned by a green-skinned man, seemed to call to her. She wandered over to inspect the wares: alien fruits, some with purple spines, others small and yellow and set in clusters.

“Can I interest you in anything?” asked the vendor in a smooth voice.

Yani looked up at him, meeting vertical, reptilian pupils. The man had black hair pulled back in a high ponytail. A ridged forehead and high cheekbones sculpted his face to stately perfection.

Yani felt an overpowering rush of desire. She reveled in the thought of pressing her skin against his cool, scaled body, letting him sex her however he pleased, and knew in every atom of her being that it would be _good_.

“Hey!” Boba’s voice cut through her daze. “Move along.” He prodded her back until she took a shaky step away from the vendor, then another.

When she got about five feet away, the haze of desire disappeared. “What just happened?”

“He’s a Faleen. Their species exude pheromones to help them make sexual conquests.”

Yani looked over her shoulder at the vendor’s sly smile. “That’s awful.”

Boba grunted. “Just stay away from them in the future. You have to be close for it to work.”

Yani wanted to do more than just stay away; she wanted that man and anyone like him locked up. She had lost all control of herself. If he’d gotten what he wanted, sex with her, it would have been rape. But there wasn’t anything Yani could do about him now.

“I’d like to get you some things to keep you entertained,” Boba said. “There should be a station around here somewhere… Like that.” He strode toward a clunky machine with a display screen. Boba took out a datapad and plugged it into the machine, and its display lit up. “Buy whatever holovids or games you want. Space is boring.”

He left Yani alone. She examined the datapad. It was thick, with a touchscreen as well as a holoprojector. Curious what media Boba already had installed (she didn’t want to buy any repeats), she opened up the files and scrolled through the list. A collection of books, a game involving removing matching tiles, a first-person shooter game (which struck her as hilarious), and a vid series on the history of galactic weaponry. One file folder was labeled simply “X,” and she clicked on it without thinking.

It was porn. Yani very, very quickly clicked back to the main folder list, blushing. Enough snooping for one day. She turned away from the datapad to the machine and began browsing the machine’s collection of space operas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Threats of Rape/non-con" tag is just for the brief mention in this chapter. I don't plan on having any more threats.


	7. Overheard

They were several days out from the spaceport. Yani was itching to ask where they were headed, but Boba had switched course at least once that she’d seen already; maybe he didn’t know either.

Yani knew by the dimmed lights in the spacecraft’s interior that it was “night,” and to keep a circadian rhythm, she should be going to sleep. But she wasn’t tired. She was antsy. Horny. And not yet confident enough in her relationship with Boba to proposition him. She didn’t want to be immediately jettisoned from the airlock.

Okay, she was sure he wouldn’t go _that_ far, but he might change his mind about keeping her aboard if it turned out that she’d misread this entire situation and he wasn’t the least bit interested in her sexually.

There was another option, though—one that touched on her desire to be close to him. Yani snuck Boba’s datapad down to her nest in the lower levels of the ship, newly padded with a thick mat that had been another of Boba’s purchases when they’d stopped at the spaceport to resupply. Now the nest more closely resembled a bed rather than a conglomeration of blankets.

After all, the datapad was for her use too; hadn’t he said as much several times when she apologized for commandeering it to watch her space operas? Though, to be fair, his “Watch whatever you like” probably hadn’t referred to his porn stash.

Yani listened for movement, but Boba had been quiet for a while, either in his room or the cockpit, both locations safely out of hearing distance. Out of caution, she kept the datapad muted even as she selected a holovid.

A small image projected from the datapad of a Mirialan female, distinguishable by her green skin and facial tattoos, posing flirtatiously. She was long-limbed and gorgeous. She shrugged off her robe, leaving her naked, and then a human male stepped into the scene behind her. He dragged a hand along her curves. He kissed her neck, squeezed her breasts, then picked her up and set her on a bed.

Yani set the datapad down within sight and slid her hand into her pants even as the man shed his clothing and entered the Mirialan.

—

Boba Fett leaned back in his pilot’s chair, drumming his fingers on the console thoughtfully. He’d just received a transmission from some Imperials who wanted to hire him for a job. The pay was good, and Boba needed to do _something_. He couldn’t amble through space forever, wasting fuel.

His reluctance to take another job probably had something to do with his new crewmate (he’d stopped thinking of her as a passenger and more as a newly-permanent fixture on his ship). He didn’t know how she’d respond to seeing him in action, in the thick of bounty hunting. It might frighten her off, might remind her what kind of person she’d so trustingly thrown her lot in with. But this was silly, he told himself. She’d already seen him in action. The day they met, she watched him shoot that bodyguard, and still she’d gone with him.

Boba replied to the transmission and accepted the job.

He should tell Yani. After inputting the target coordinates and letting the computer chart a flight path, he stood to go find her. If she weren’t already asleep, he’d inform her of the fact that he’d taken on a new mission and tell her to brace for the jump to hyperspace.

At the top of the ladder to descend into her quarters, Boba paused. Soft shuffling sounds drifted upward, and his instincts processed them quicker than his conscious mind, telling him to be quiet and not give away his presence. He heard a tiny moan and finally comprehended what was happening: Yani was masturbating.

Boba leaned against the wall, instantly hard. Yani, Yani was down there touching herself, and he could almost visualize her blue fingers rubbing at her clit, her eyes squeezed shut and mouth parted. If she was horny, he could go down there and offer his services. Boba lost himself in a fantasy of climbing down and interrupting her, pulling her hand away and sucking the slick from her fingers, crawling over her and giving her a thorough fucking until she was screaming his name.

He couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right to reveal that he’d been listening to her in a private moment. If he hadn’t happened to be directly above her, he never even would have overheard. And what if he offered to help her out and she declined? He didn’t think he could handle the rejection.

So Boba returned to his room, moving without making a noise. Only once he was safely inside his cot, closed off from the ship, did he let himself groan and pull his cock out of his pants. He dragged a bead of precum over the head and began stroking.

Was Yani naked, nearby aboard his ship? Or had she kept her clothes on so that she could quickly pull herself together in case of discovery? If so, she’d have her hand delved into those tan trousers she’d worn that day, maybe with the button open to give her more room to work. Maybe sitting up against the bulkhead, legs parted. Maybe laying on her stomach with her arm under her.

What color were her nipples? How would her breath hitch if he sank into her? Would her nails dig into his bicep, would she beg _More, please, more_ and tug him closer with legs around his waist?

It was pathetic how badly he wanted her. She was the first woman he’d met in a while who was neither a quarry nor a client nor someone with a vendetta against him, and he’d fallen for her instantly. She’d said, “ _Come on. Rescue a damsel in distress,_ ” with an ironic set to her shoulders, daring him to be the good guy for once, and he’d accepted. In the bar, she’d touched his arm and gazed at him with such concern in her deep, raven eyes. Boba adored her eyes. They were space—black holes somehow even darker than their surroundings, accented with glimmers of reflected light like stars. They were home.

Boba didn’t deserve her. He had never placed much stock in terms like that before, because the galaxy didn’t consider how nobly people lived their lives when it decided their fate. Boba had been an instrument of injustice long enough to know that no one really deserved what was coming to them.

Still, if there were a modicum of fairness in the universe, some cosmic karma that rewarded goodness with its like, then Boba knew that he didn’t deserve Yani. His hands had tasted blood so often that they looked strange when they were clean. Screams were a nuisance, his indifference so thick that they barely registered.

Yani was sweet, Yani was _good_.

And he was too old for her. Strange, how a small argument like that still floated through the tide of his self-loathing, bobbing up to claim his attention amidst a sea of bloody reasons why he shouldn’t pursue her. He didn’t know her exact age, but he had to have at least a decade on her.

Yes, he was too old, but that didn’t stop him from fantasizing about having her naked in his lap, her back to his chest as she sank onto his cock, moaning into his neck.

Boba groaned and stroked himself faster.

He didn’t deserve her love. He doubted she lusted after him, with his scars and his gruff demeanor. His only choices were to keep away from her or settle for a facsimile of the connection he craved. He could take her up on that first offer for sex, right after he’d saved her, when she’d knelt in his lap and he hadn’t yet known to savor the sensation of her closeness, hadn’t yet realized how acute his lust would become.

Her mockery echoed in his mind. “ _You’re a man, aren’t you?_ ” And yes, despite his best efforts to the contrary, despite the stories that called him a monster or a machine, he was. But if he went to her now and told her that he’d changed his mind, he would accept sex as repayment of her debt, she would give him a knowing little smile. She would know how pathetic he was and that she’d been right, and he couldn’t bear that.

So he stayed in his cot in the dark and came on his stomach alone. The mighty Boba Fett, defeated by simple embarrassment.


	8. Quarry

Yani watched from the cockpit as Boba piloted down into the mountainous terrain of Lelmra, an unimportant mid-rim planet. She knew he could take care of himself, but still she worried about him going off on his own. What if he got hurt or killed while trying to capture this quarry? What if he walked down the ramp of the  _ Slave IV _ and disappeared, never returning to the ship, and she waited and waited alone, stranded?

Boba seemed to sense her anxiety, for he reassured her multiple times. “This won’t be a dangerous mission. He came to a nearly-deserted planet to hide, and he has no known associates to provide him backup.”

She still wasn’t convinced.

Boba elaborated when she didn’t speak. “His name is Gon-Dukk Krund. He’s an Imperial deserter. The remaining officers are just cleaning up the last of their mess, getting rid of people who could identify them before they go into hiding or reacclimate to society.”

Yani didn’t like Boba working for the Empire at all, even the scattered remnants of it. But he’d managed to retain his autonomy this long. Chances were that he wouldn’t get sucked into a conflict too big for him to handle.

And yet it was with fear that she watched him make a final check of his gear, watched his retreating back as he left the ship, the door to the hull irising shut and cutting off her view of him. He’d left her a comlink in case of emergencies, but gripping the piece of cool metal did little to assuage her worries.

She meandered through the ship. Somehow there seemed even less to do than when Boba was by himself but still onboard. She pulled out the cleaning supplies and thoroughly scrubbed the refresher, her living space, and the cockpit. The mirror glinted, the transparisteel was clear as air, and every button and switch on the console stood out in crisp definition. She understood now why Boba kept his spacecraft in such pristine condition; when there was fuck-all to do, cleaning was a decent way to mind-numbingly pass the time.

Boba returned empty-handed on the second evening. “Wanted to sleep in my own bed for the night,” he explained. “But I’m close. I’ve tracked him to a settlement up on one of these mountains.”

As he stripped off his armor, Yani wanted to massage the tension from his shoulders, to tell him how she missed him when he was gone, how she worried for his soul when he was off bounty hunting. Because he was the man from the brutal legends then, not the man who had saved her. Instead she said, “What do I do if you don’t come back?”

Boba opened a bottle of protein shake and swallowed a drink. “If you don’t see me for a month, consider me dead. Sell the ship immediately so that you don’t become a target. Lots of creatures would like to blow this thing up. And feel free to seize control of the stashes of credits I’ve hidden away. Another time, I’ll sit down with you and have you memorize their locations and access codes. I don’t want to write that information down in case it falls into the wrong hands.”

That had not been the answer Yani was anticipating. “You’re going to leave me everything?”

Boba busied himself undoing his boots so that he didn’t have to look at her. “Well, I don’t have a kid to leave it to.”

Was that how he saw her? Sure, she was younger than him, but not by  _ that _ much. It wasn’t like he was old enough to be her father, unless he’d had kids very young. No, she was closer to wife than child.

She wanted to be his… girlfriend? Lover? She wanted to be something to him.

That night, she dreamed of flying the _ Slave IV _ in a desperate run from faceless enemies. Boba was gone, dead, leaving her instructionless and desolate. His enemies, now hers, caught up to her and shot the ship from the sky, boarded with blasters waving, demanding, “Who are you to Fett? Why did he leave everything in your care?” And she could only reply, “I don’t know!”

Boba left again in the morning and returned mid-afternoon, this time with a prisoner in tow.

Yani peered out the cockpit viewport, half in hiding because she wasn’t certain Boba wanted her presence made known. The quarry was humanoid, with tanned, leathery skin. A Weequay.

The hull door opened. Yani pressed her back to the wall near the cockpit’s entrance, safely out of sight but close enough to hear the quarry’s stream of begging. “Please,” he said, “if it’s credits you want, I can get you double whatever they’re offering for me. I promise I’m good for it. I’ll need a little time to get it all together though.”

Yani heard the cell door creak open, then close with metallic finality.

“Can you blame me for running away? We all know what the Empire was. If I had been smart, I would have run away to that princess and her fucking band of misfits rather than try to start a new life on my own. They would have imprisoned me for everything I did for the Empire, or forced me to work with them in the Rebellion, but at least I would have been safer. I just, I just wanted to get away from the fighting.”

Boba made no indication that he even heard the man. He entered the cockpit and gave Yani a glance that was unreadable through the stark coldness of his visor. Then he strapped into the pilot’s seat and took off.

The prisoner was silent for a time, so Yani could fix dinner and almost pretend that he wasn’t there, that she wasn’t thinking about him. But his monologuing started up again as she lay down to sleep, and the ship was small enough that even though her sleeping area was far removed from the hull, she could still make out his voice.

“Please, Fett, I have a wife,” the man started again, desperation coloring his voice. “I’ll never get to see her again. I’ll never get to hold her again. It’s just us against the galaxy. She understands how tough it is to live with myself; she keeps me good, helps me start over again every day. Do you have anyone like that? I don’t want her to live out the rest of her days wondering how they finally decided to kill me, picturing it. She worries so much already. It will break her heart.”

Yani tossed and turned, each word stabbing deeper into her chest like a dagger of ice, numbingly cold.

“They’re going to kill me just to cover their tracks, to snip off loose ends of their operation who might testify against them. But I don’t want any trouble! If I promise never to tell, would you let me go? You could say I was dead, and I’ll go into hiding again and never come out. I just don’t want to die. I don’t want to _die_.”

His arguments repeated, stressing the fact that he’d been trying to be a better man since leaving, that it wasn’t fair that the Empire had caught up to him now, after it was all but defeated, that if he managed to hide just a few more years, it would be gone entirely and he could live in peace.

Late, late into the night, Yani rose from her bed, drawn toward the prisoner. She floated through the ship as if she were sleepwalking, without even consciously deciding to do so, and then she was standing in front of the cage.

The Weequay was shocked at her appearance. Presumably, he hadn’t known there was anyone else aboard. But his pleas began anew, their fervor redoubled. “Lady, lovely lady, please let me out. Tell Fett to let me go. He’ll listen to you.” He grabbed the bars of the cage with wrinkled fingers. “I swear, I’m not a bad person. I don’t deserve to die. I know I was an Imperial, but I’ve changed, I promise! Tell him, please tell him!”

The clink of spurs on her left alerted her to Boba’s presence. He took in the half-asleep, blank daze of her eyes, the blanket clutched tight, slipping off one shoulder. Boba calmly approached the cage. He opened the lock as the Weequay cowered away, features twisted in terror, ignored his, “No, please, no!” and struck him over the head with the butt of a blaster.

The man’s body crumpled, and there was finally silence in the ship.

Boba scrutinized Yani.

She still hadn’t moved, gaze trained on the unconscious form of the Weequay—the rise and fall of his chest and the way one of his hands still reached toward the bars he’d been clutching just moments ago.

“Why don’t you go back to bed?” Boba prompted gently.

Without a word, Yani obeyed.

When sleep finally took over, she dreamed of Boba dragging her by the lekku the way men had in the past, painful. She stumbled as she fought against his grip, but he threw her into the cage, her meager strength no match for his. His helmet was violent indifference as he locked the door and ignored her screams of, “No, please, no!”


	9. Asleep

Early in the morning, Boba mixed a pack of his cheapest meal powder with water to form an unappetizing sludge. It wasn’t pretty, but it contained the necessary nutrients to keep one near-human alive. He brought the bowl of sludge (without utensils, utensils could become weapons) to the hard merchandise in his cage. He entered the cage, nudged the man with his boot until he stirred, and then set the bowl in front of him.

“Stellar service, this is.” The Weequay groaned and rubbed the bump on his scalp.

“Keep your voice down,” Boba said. “The girl’s asleep.”

He pushed himself into a sitting position. “She’s beautiful. How long have you been together?”

Boba didn’t answer. He wasn’t here to talk about his relationship with Yani, or the disappointing lack of one. He was here to ensure that the merchandise didn’t upset Yani anymore the way he had last night. Boba’s stomach had twisted when he heard the cretin begging her to let him out, as if he had any right to address her.

“I can tell you from experience that it only gets harder. She’ll push you to be better and look at you with the saddest eyes when you inevitably don’t live up to her ideals. She’ll become the reason for every decision you make.”

Now the man was talking as if he knew Boba, as if he were some romantic authority who  _ understood _ what Boba went through every time Yani was exposed to the less-than-savory aspects of Boba’s work. When he could almost feel her processing and reevaluating him, and he feared that this would be the time that she tallied up his faults and decided he was beyond redemption.

“It’s worth it, though: falling in love.” The Weequay leaned his head back against the wall. “If you’re ever in the vicinity of Lelmra, tell my wife… Actually, scratch that. Do me a favor and never, ever contact her. The last thing she needs is  _ Boba Fett _ showing up on her doorstep.”

Boba was done enduring this man’s talk of falling in love. “I will if you do me a favor and shut up. I’m used to pathetic rambling from quarries, but the girl isn’t.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any hope for charming you into releasing me? Or bargaining?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll shut up. For your woman’s peace of mind.”

“Good.” Boba exited the cage and locked it behind him. “I have no qualms about gagging you if you can’t.”

—

Was it just his imagination, or was Yani dressed in more conservative clothing this morning, as if she were trying to hide from him? “We’ll intercept the Imperial cruiser in around ten hours,” Boba told her, handing her a cup of caf like a peace offering.

She took it back to her own space to drink.

Boba respected her by staying far away whenever possible, but it pained him. Had he ruined his chances with her by taking this contract? He couldn’t even speak to her to clear the air out of fear of the Weequay overhearing.

Boba spent the day cleaning and repairing blasters, just to give himself something to do. When they were spotless, he plotted courses to potential destinations. There were dens of bounty hunting activity where he could see if any good jobs were posted. The Hutts always had work for him. And there were other hives of criminal activity full of people with credits who’d jump to hire a thug in Mandalorian armor, like Tatooine. Tatooine, the scene of his near-death, whose desolate sands kept calling him back.

Right before they made their final approach, Boba stuffed Yani in his cot again. He had yet to think of a better hiding spot for her. Maybe he could install a false panel somewhere to conceal a hiding nook. It said something about his work that he was so terrified of any clients catching wind of Yani; namely, it said that she had no place here. Boba set those unwelcome thoughts aside for later pondering.

As with the last time, the sight of Yani curling up in his bed provoked a visceral response in his body. He longed to climb in after her, to pin her down and make love to her until he forgot his fear, and he had to tear his eyes away lest he give in to the temptation. The armor helped, providing another barrier between them. If he wanted to take Yani, he’d have to clumsily extract himself from all his gear first, and that awkward image was like a douse of cold water on his horniness. As was their impending arrival at the Imp cruiser, with all its accompanying danger. There wasn’t time to fixate on Yani, so Boba closed the panel on his cot and shut away all thoughts of her for the time being.

Boba landed in the cruiser’s hangar and marched his merchandise down the ramp. Some low-level officer greeted him with the self-satisfied smile for which the Imps were famous.

“Ah, I see you’ve managed to apprehend him. In record time. I’d expect nothing less from one with your reputation.”

Boba kept a casual grip on the Weequay’s arm. “You owe me 10,000 credits, I believe. If you want to tack on a bonus for quick delivery, I won’t turn it down.”

The officer’s smile became even greasier. “I believe we agreed upon an amount in advance, regardless of delivery speed.”

“As you wish.”

The officer snapped his fingers, and an underling darted forward with a sack of credits.

Boba did a quick count before shoving the Weequay forward.

“I have another job for you if you’re interested. It will pay even higher than this one.”

Before, Boba would have accepted in an instant, nothing better to do and no reason to turn good credits down. But Yani was onboard now, hiding because Boba was putting her at risk just by being here, and she wouldn’t like him working for the Imps any longer than necessary. _She’ll become the reason for every decision you make_ , the Weequay had said. Boba shook his head. “I’m afraid I have other work lined up already.”

“A shame.”

Boba returned to his ship without incident, flew out of the hangar, and made a microjump in a random direction to get out of range of the cruiser’s trackers. Only then did he relax.

He stored the credits then went to let Yani out. He pressed the exterior button to open his cot, and, and she was asleep, curled up with an arm under the pillow. Boba knelt, bringing his head to her height. Her face was serene, without the anxieties of wakefulness. Boba lifted a gloved hand, meaning to caress her cheek, and then halted. He had no right. Especially when she’d been avoiding him all day.

And besides, he didn’t want to wake her. She’d slept poorly the night before, which was his fault. The least he could do was let her have his cot for the night rather than rudely evicting her after she’d already fallen asleep.

Boba closed the panel. He put away his armor and returned to the cockpit, where he set the ship on a new course and watched the hypnotic streaks of hyperspace until he drifted off in his chair.


	10. Where To?

Yani stretched groggily. It took time to awaken from such a deep sleep, and she spent it in a blissful stupor. Her bed was warm and cozily dark and smelled so comforting, like Boba.

Yani opened her eyes, hit with a rush of awareness. She wasn’t in her bed; she was in Boba’s. She’d fallen asleep—how many hours had it been? Why hadn’t Boba woken her? Was he all right, or was he in the clutches of the Empire?

No, she could feel the ship’s movement. They were traveling again. Yani risked opening the cot, and the door to Boba’s room was a void through which the smell of hot caf drifted. It must have been morning.

She straightened her clothes as best she could and went to find Boba to apologize. He was in the cockpit, unarmored, drinking a cup of caf and fiddling with the datapad.

“Morning,” he said, the pilot’s chair turning slightly toward her. “I made toast sticks if you’re interested.” He gestured to a plate on the dash.

Yani reached for a couple, then stepped back, feeling safer in his peripheral vision. “I’m so sorry that I fell asleep in your bed.”

“Don’t be. You needed the rest.”

So did he. If he hadn’t returned to his bed, then where had he slept? The pilot’s chair? That couldn’t be comfortable. She wasn’t a very good guest if she kept inconveniencing him. “Where are we headed?”

Boba took too long to respond for such a simple inquiry. “I don’t know,” he finally said, not looking at her. “My options for employment are the Empire, the Hutts, or another crime syndicate. There’s nothing I can do that won’t make you loathe me even more.”

“I don’t loathe you,” Yani said, shocked.

“You just don’t approve of my work.”

She shuffled her feet, at a loss. How candid did he want her to be? “It’s not really my place to question you.”

“But?”

“Well,” she grimaced, “bounty hunting seems to be in a tricky place, morally. Did that man deserve to be turned over to the Empire after trying to escape it?”

“That’s why I don’t cast judgments on my quarries. It’s not for me to decide who deserves freedom and who doesn’t. I’m a middleman, not a jury.”

“But you weren’t handing him over to a jury. You were handing him over to the fucking Empire!”

“What would you have me do? Honestly, I’m asking you. This is all I’ve ever known, and I’m damn good at it. But the people who are paying the highest rates are all criminally involved one way or another.”

Why did her opinion matter to him? “I don’t know! Don’t most bounty hunters work at least tangentially to the law, tracking down people who’ve skipped bail and stuff?”

Boba spun the chair to face her directly, as if  _ that _ were the most outrageous thing she’d yet said. “You want me to hunt down bail-jumpers. You want me to hunt down bail-jumpers for pocket change.” His face said that this was an alien language to him. “I made ten thousand credits on my last job—fifteen on the one before. Working ‘tangentially to the law,’ as you so articulately put it, would earn me perhaps five hundred a head. That’s nothing.”

“Five hundred credits is a lot,” Yani said. Five hundred credits had bought her her freedom. “But if it’s nothing to you, I guess I don’t have to pay you back.”

Boba rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No, sweetheart, you don’t have to pay me back. I’m sorry. When I demanded that money from you, I was treating you like…” He trailed off.

What _was_ she to him? Why had he bought her new clothes and kept her aboard? If she didn’t know better, she would have guessed he was attracted to her, _but_ , but he’d rejected her at the beginning and _hadn’t made a move since_. “Why am I still here, Boba?”

“Loth-cats don’t do well on ships.”

The quippy answer somehow made her feel better. So he wanted a cat, fine. Disregarding the fact that people weren’t pets (and one didn’t typically ask one’s pets for career advice), Yani understood that Boba was just a lonely man who craved some company.

She was still gripping the toast sticks in one hand, so she took a bite.

“You could take a vacation,” she suggested, in case the question of his employment was still on the table.

“A vacation,” he deadpanned.

“Yes, have you heard of them? Call it a sabbatical if that better suits your sensibilities. You could take some time off and think about what you want to do.” She spoke between bites of breakfast. “Or you could give working for the New Republic a try. Take those small bounties. It sounds like you can afford to. Who knows; you might like it.”

“Would you stick around longer if I did?”

Yani looked at the floor. “I don’t want you to do this just for me. I’ve upended your life enough already. So, I’ll stick around as long as you’ll have me, no matter what you decide. But I would be more comfortable condoning the bounty hunting of criminals than the paid kidnapping of political rivals.”

“All right,” Boba said. “We’ll go to the Guild headquarters on Nevarro and see if I can’t find work through the official channels. There’s more regulation with Guild work than freelancing. Not much, mind you, but some.”

Yani released a breath. He was trying. He was actually trying to be better.

“But I won’t be using any of my expensive equipment on a mission that wouldn’t even recoup the tech’s worth.” Boba said this with a finger pointed at her, like she would be personally pushing him to pull out all the stops on minor bounties. “No seismic charges, no dampener fields.”

“Of course,” Yani said with mock-severity. “Even philanthropy has its limit.”

Boba fought a smile, one corner of his mouth tilting up in that way of his, and Yani would’ve very much liked to kiss him.


	11. Positive Reinforcement

Boba landed outside Nevarro’s major city, where the Bounty Hunter’s Guild was currently stationed. He lingered in his ship. He wasn’t dreading this interaction—Boba Fett didn’t care enough about it to dread it—but neither was he looking forward to seeing other bounty hunters. Most of them, he had probably stolen jobs from at some point; they had reason to hate him.

“What’s going on?” Yani asked when he hadn’t moved from the pilot’s chair for several minutes.

Boba made up an excuse. “This is a planet with high levels of volcanic activity. The ship is taking some readings to make sure we’ve parked in a stable spot.” That function _was_ possible, he just hadn’t engaged it.

“It can do that?” She sounded eager, curious, and he seized the opportunity to talk about his ship.

“It can do that and much more. It was my father’s idea to modify the _Slave I_ to resemble a regular Firespray-31-class so that no one could guess what surprises lay under the unassuming siding. I kept the same theme when I ordered the _Slave IV_ custom-built from Kuat Drive Yards. This ship is a marvel of engineering. It can self-seal minor cracks if it’s damaged in space, and it can identify if there are crude explosives aboard just by taking readings of the air content. My armor links to its gross functions, so I can command it to drop out of orbit and land near me on a planet’s surface.”

“Wow,” Yani said, justifiably impressed.

“Kuat of Kuat tried to add a few tricks of his own, like a command to send out a tracking beacon at the press of one of his buttons, but it only took me three days to find and disable that code, so I wonder if he didn’t implement deeper traps.” Kuat of Kuat, who shared his name with his planet, was one of the few enemies Boba respected. They cunningly danced around one another, and even when their interests aligned, Boba knew better than to trust him. If Kuat hadn’t invented the trope of suave villains reclining on a throne stroking a felinx, he’d at least perfected it.

“So,” Yani interrupted his musings, “how long will the ship take to get those seismic activity ratings?”

That was right, Boba had other, lesser enemies to attend to—ones whose interactions wouldn’t be a game but a chore. Boba pretended to check a screen on his console. “It’s done. I can go.”

He left Yani aboard. There was zero chance he was bringing her into a den of bounty hunters.

The cantina in which Greef Karga held court looked exactly like every other dingy cantina in the galaxy. When Boba stepped inside, all eyes turned to him, all hands inched toward blasters.

Karga rose from his seat. “Oh no, I don’t think so.”

Boba inwardly sighed. _I’m doing this for Yani._ “Hello, Karga. I’m interested in picking up work through Guild channels. Have anything for me?”

“Bold words from a man who takes pleasure spitting on our boots as he flies off with our bounties.”

_ You wouldn’t be so flippant with me if you weren’t surrounded by two dozen lackeys, you half-rate, nerf-herding…_ “People change.” 

“People might,” Karga said, “but I’m not convinced you fall in that category.”

Boba grit his teeth, barely managing to keep his words from sneering. “What would you say if I told you I was trying to impress a woman with my good heart and philanthropic spirit?”

“I’d say I didn’t believe you. Now get out, before things get messy.”

Boba didn’t regret that they’d turned him down, except that Yani would be disappointed. He left the cantina burning under the heat of so many eyes.

A young bounty hunter, practically a kid, caught up to him at the outskirts of the city. “Hey, Boba Fett!”

Boba paused. “What?”

“If it’s Guild work you want, you can have one of my pucks. The name’s Danelli Hubru. Dan. I’m actually a big fan, sir, so if you need anything, anything at all, you can usually find me around here.”

“Stop talking. Give me the puck.”

“Yes, sir.” He handed it over.

The situation wasn’t ideal, but it was the best Boba could hope for. He dodged the rest of Dan’s questions (“How did you escape the Sarlacc? Is it true you once single-handedly stole a spice kingpin from his fortified castle?”) and made all haste back to his ship.

“How did it go?” Yani asked, her expression as innocent and eager as the kid bounty hunter’s, but on her, it didn’t make Boba want to put his face through a wall.

“The Guild doesn’t want me,” he said as he strapped into the pilot’s chair and prepared for liftoff. He didn’t want to stay planetside any longer than necessary. “Smart of them. The last time I joined their ranks, it was part of an elaborate plot to destroy the organization.”

Yani settled in the corner and grabbed onto some rigging, used to the _Slave’s_ tilting by now. That was another thing he needed to do: install a second chair. “You plotted to bring down the Bounty Hunter’s Guild?”

“No, I survived someone else’s plotting. They nearly didn’t.” He guided the ship out of the atmosphere. “Luckily for us, some newbie bounty hunter thought that Boba Fett might make a good ally, and he gave me a puck.” Boba took out the puck and pulled up the quarry’s last known location. “It looks like we’re going to Lothal.”

The ship’s computer took several minutes to plot a course since the trip would be a long one. Boba never begrudged this delay. If the hyperspace route collided with a star, Boba, the ship, and everything onboard would disintegrate before they had time to wonder why everything was so bright.

The computer beeped that it was ready, and Boba warned Yani to brace for the jump. Only once they were safely in hyperspace did he lean back and sigh.

—

“You look tired,” Yani said, watching Boba’s mask of perfect competence slip. He rarely relaxed outside of hyperspace, and entering it was like lifting a threatening weight off his shoulders.

His shoulder muscles were tight, indicative of a life constantly on edge.

Yani blurted out, “I could give you a massage,” before she stopped to think.

Boba’s head turned slowly toward her, his expression as unreadable as the helmet.

“Only if you want,” she said, and then she just kept talking because she couldn’t halt the flow of words. “I mean, I feel like I should be positively reinforcing you for doing good deeds. You take Guild work over Imperial, you get a massage. You hold in an insult, you get a piece of candy, like I’m training a charhound. If you ever rescue someone from a burning ship, I’ll fuck you.”

“Does it count if I set the ship on fire just to get the reward?”

Yani laughed, relieved that he wasn’t mad at her. “I think that would defeat the purpose.”

He studied her for several moments. “All right. You can give me a massage. What do I do?”

Really? Her heartbeat picked up. But Boba was looking so lost, and she understood that she’d have to guide the interaction. “Okay! Um, go to the hull, and I’ll meet you there in a second.” They couldn’t do it in his bed because it was too cramped, but the hull had plenty of space. She dashed first to her sleeping area to grab a blanket and the thick pad that served as her bed, then to the fresher for some lotion. She hauled it all to the hull and spread the blanket over the pad. “Here. Lay face down on this.”

Boba started to obey, but she stopped him.

“You have to take your shirt off first.” Yani bit her lip, praying that she wasn’t pushing him too far. She could’ve given him an out—told him he could keep it on if he’d be more comfortable that way—but now that the option was before her, she kind of wanted to see Boba shirtless.

Boba narrowed his eyes. But then, to Yani’s amazement, he pulled his shirt over his shoulders.

Boba’s chest was as scarred as his face, fading lines mapping out a lifetime of injuries. He had the physique of a person who worked out for actual strength rather than cosmetic muscles. Yani wanted to run her hands over all that tanned skin, and the frightening thing was that she would _get_ to, very soon.

Boba lay on the pad, his arms cradling his head.

Before Yani could talk herself out of it, she straddled his hips.

Boba’s breath hitched.

She rubbed lotion onto her hands, staring at his broad back and thinking entirely inappropriate things about him. “I’m sorry if this isn’t very good. I’m not a professional masseuse or anything.”

“It’s fine, Yani.”

She pushed her hands up along his spine, spreading the lotion out. Then she dug her thumbs into his shoulders and kneaded. At Boba’s low groan, she gained the confidence to work deeper into his muscles, focusing on the spots that were bunched with tension. There were many.

Had Boba ever gotten a back massage? Had he ever trusted someone enough to place himself in their hands, vulnerably without the armor that was like a second skin to him? Yani couldn’t imagine that it was a frequent occurrence, and she was humbled by his faith in her.

She pushed her fingers up the back of his neck, and Boba shifted a little beneath her. “Is this all right?” She hadn’t meant to whisper, but the ship was so quiet, and the moment so intimate, and Yani was scared to snap the tension that was thickening her throat and making it hard to breathe.

“Yes. It’s all right.”


	12. The Value of Lives

Yani sat on the floor of the ship in the kitchen that was so cramped it was more of a hall, but it was where they stored and prepared food, so she considered it the kitchen. She and Boba both cradled cups of noodles, but Boba was standing, leaned against the far wall as he ate.

“What about in the Mid Rim?” he asked. He was quizzing her on the locations of his stashes of credits around the galaxy in case he was ever separated from her, or in case he got killed.

“There’s a secure deposit box on Malastare at Dug and Gran Storage,” she recited between bites of noodle. “It’s under the name Ralf Karissad. Box number: 398-NH. Code to open it is 358734.”

“Good girl,” Boba said, validating the hours it had taken to memorize all this information.

Yani glowed. Something about his word choice, in particular, was heady, made Yani want to earn that praise again.

“And what about Tatooine?”

Yani squeezed her eyes shut to remember better. “Exactly three miles East of the Mos Espa cantina named the Burnt Bantha, there’s a rock formation that looks like a large feline. Buried between its front paws is a chest. Lock code: 256.”

“And what’s in the chest?”

Shavit. Yani opened her eyes and braced for his disappointment. “It’s money, half in Imperial credits and half in… druggats?”

“Wupiupi. And those spend best in the Outer Rim.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re doing well. I know it’s a lot.”

And Yani would have to rehearse the information in her spare time so she never forgot. How did Boba keep track of it all?

“If someone does take me out,” Boba said, “your first priority is getting away safely and laying low. You don’t even need to know how to fly because the ship will listen to your voice commands, but if you’re interested in learning, I can still teach you.”

She didn’t want to think about him dying, so she focused on the other part of his statement. “That’s super cool! Will the _Slave IV_ listen to anyone’s commands?”

“No, just mine and yours. I programmed in your voice and DNA sequence early on.”

When had he… How had he…? “You took my DNA? What the fuck, Boba!”

Boba slurped up a noodle, looking like he wasn’t sure what she was getting worked up about. “Of course. Do you think I would leave you _alone_ on this ship if it didn’t recognize you? It’s full of booby traps.”

Yani stared, trying to wrap her head around this, but new angles kept occurring to her. “Wait, you told me that if you died, I should sell the ship so that it doesn’t draw attention to me. But you never told me how to program in the new owner’s DNA, or whatever. So what would happen to them if they tried to fly it?”

“They would get blown up. But don’t worry. No one interested in acquiring Boba Fett’s old ship is going to fall under the deontological protection of innocents.”

Yani set down her cup of noodles and put her head in her hands. They had a long way to go in their goal of making Boba into a good person. The simplest truisms, like, ‘Don’t blow up strangers,’ APPARENTLY hadn’t stuck yet. “Okay. Boba, I would feel very bad about handing your ship over to anyone if I knew that I’d be putting them in danger like that, so much so that I might avoid selling it at all, and then _I_ would be in danger since you think the ship would make me a target. How do we fix this?”

Boba finished his noodles in silence, contemplating. Then he threw away the empty cup and gestured for her to follow him. “All right. I’ll show you how to disarm the bombs.”

—

Boba picked up the bail-jumper without issue. The middle-aged man was holed up in a sleazy hotel, and he took one look at Boba before raising his hands in surrender. Boba dragged him out of the pile of alcohol bottles and take-out food containers growing on the room like mold, thinking about how _easy_ this was. The man didn’t put up a fight, didn’t have a single hired blaster watching his back, hadn’t even known how to cover his tracks. He’d been in the first place Boba checked.

Boba remembered starting out his hunting career, as a child, when every job felt like the hardest he’d ever done. Four hundred credits would have made a difference—fixed a part of his ship that was making strange noises and bought him enough food to last another mission. He would not have apprehended this perp so quickly or without a fight. The man would’ve looked at a teenager and thought, incorrectly, that he could punch his way out.

Now, this quarry surrendered immediately at the sight of Boba Fett of legend, and his bounty was nothing but a pittance.

The harder operation would be, ironically, turning him in. Would Karga accept the quarry from Boba’s hands?

Boba marched his merchandise into the Nevarro cantina with a swagger, as if he had every right to be there. Confidence won half of all battles.

“What’s this?” Karga asked.

Boba showed him the puck the kid had given him. “You commissioned a job, I delivered. I’d like payment, please.”

“That commission wasn’t issued to you.”

“I’m holding the puck, aren’t I?” _Just take the merchandise, fool._

Karga shook his head. “I told you already, Fett, the Guild wants nothing to do with you.”

Boba wished they could have done this the easy way, but Karga was obstinate in his refusal. “Right.” In a split second, Boba had his blaster out.

The other cantina patrons drew in response, but they shuffled in confusion when they saw that Boba’s blaster was pointed not at Karga, but at the head of the quarry right next to him.

“The puck specified that it wanted the quarry alive,” Boba explained. “The courts want him to serve his just sentence, or some shavit. Now you, Karga, earn a percentage of every bounty. But a few hundred credits really don’t mean that much to me; I could just as easily shoot this man here and walk away with nothing. If you want that payday, you’ll hand over my money now, otherwise you can explain to the courts why you’ve got a body rather than a prisoner.”

A muscle in Karga’s face twitched. “You’re a piece of work, did you know that?”

“I’ve been told once or twice.”

Karga signaled for the bounty hunters around them to lower their weapons. “Fine. I’ll pay you your bounty.”

“I want another puck, too.”

Karga selected one from a pile with great theatricality, setting it on the counter along with a stack of credits. “Someday, I hope you’ll sit down with me and explain what this is all about.”

Boba grabbed the credits and the puck, then shoved the quarry forward. “Pleasure doing business.”


	13. Nevarro

The kid bounty hunter caught up to Boba outside the cantina. “Hey, wait!”

Boba halted, letting him approach. He wasn’t in the mood, but the boy  _ had _ given him that puck for free.

Dan grinned. “I can’t believe that stunt you pulled. Threatening to shoot your  _ own _ bounty and walk away? I mean, great stuff. This is why they pay you the big bucks.” His brain caught up with his words and became confused. “Well, not anymore, I guess. I’m not sure what you’re up to now.” The smiling enthusiasm returned. “But I’m sure it’s all part of some masterful plot.”

Boba handed half of his earnings to Dan, mostly to get him to leave, but also because he appreciated the kid sticking his neck out by giving Boba one of his pucks after Karga had already said no. “We’re even now, all right?”

Dan gaped at the pile in his hands, then at Boba. “I can’t accept. You did all the work.”

“Okay, I’ll take them back then.”

Dan got confused. That seemed to be his default expression—that or worshipful.

Boba sighed. “Listen, piece of free advice: don’t offer someone credits unless you’re willing to part with them. Not every creature operates under the same social conventions… You know what, just get out of here.”

Dan pocketed the money. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” He tried to swagger away, but it more closely resembled a scamper.

“How did it go?” Yani asked when Boba made it back to the ship.

“It took some persuading, but they finally accepted the transfer. I gave half the bounty to the kid who gave me the puck.”

“Aww!”

“You don’t have to look so surprised,” Boba grumbled. “Don’t make a big deal out of this.” Though if she wanted to reward him through her little system, he wouldn’t object. The last time had been delightful, despite having to hide a hard-on at the touch of Yani’s hands, to resist the urge to thrust gently into the mattress pad, to linger on how well her legs fit around his hips.

“Can you take me into town?” Yani asked, snapping him out of the memory. “I want to stretch my legs.”

He could think of  _ several _ ways she could stretch her legs—No. Boba wrenched his thoughts back to the present, considering her request. He’d chosen not to bring her on either trip to the cantina to keep her from danger, but landing twice on a habited planet and locking her away on the ship each time was cruel. “All right. Just give me a moment to change. I don’t want to be recognized.”

He couldn’t wear the armor without attracting every gaze in the city, so he took it off. He dressed in entirely new clothes, down to a different blaster and holster at his waist, in case anyone from the cantina had an eye for details. One of the perks of wearing the helmet most of the time in public was that taking it off was a disguise in itself. Few people knew what Boba Fett looked like under the armor.

Occasionally, when he ventured out helmetless, someone mistook him for another clone. They’d catch his eye and light up, thinking they were seeing an old friend, and then their features would fall in disappointment when he turned out to be the wrong clone. Those misidentifications happened less after the Sarlacc—one positive to come from the scarring.

Boba donned a hooded cloak, and he was ready. “Where do you want to go?”

“I just want to wander around a bit,” Yani said.

He let her lead the way into the city, trailed a few steps behind as she drifted past shops, stopped at a street food vendor and asked so sweetly if Boba wouldn’t mind…? As if he could deny her anything. Curious, intelligent eyes roved over her surroundings as she snacked on whatever poor creature had been roasted on a spit. She glanced back at Boba whenever something caught her attention—a street performer, an ugly hand-painted sign over a shop—checking that he saw it too.

Boba clocked the thief a second before he grabbed Yani’s satchel and darted into an alley.

“Hey!” she yelled.

Boba dashed after him. He wasn’t wearing his vambraces, so he couldn’t snare the thief with his fibercord whip, but Boba caught up to him as he climbed onto a nearby roof, yanking him down by the ankle. The thief rose, trying to jab Boba in the stomach, but Boba caught his arm, twisted it until it cracked, then slammed the thief’s head onto his knee. The man dropped to the ground.

Yani stepped into the alley, and Boba couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Then her gaze dropped to the blood on his knee, and he knew  _ exactly _ what she was thinking.  _ Son of a mudscuffer. _ “You’ve never seen me fight before, have you?” Boba asked, filling with dread.

“That wasn’t a fight. That was you beating an urchin to a pulp. Is he even _alive_?”

Boba had to check. Honestly, the well-being of the thief hadn’t been a priority. Boba had only registered a  _ threat to Yani _ before acting on instinct.

Yani knelt by the thief, helping him into a sitting position after taking her bag back. “Get out of here,” she told him, and he was all too happy to scurry away, clutching the broken arm and casting terrified looks over his shoulder at Boba. Yani rose.

Was this when he lost her? Had they come to the end at last? Boba had shown his true, violent colors, and Yani was wondering how to break with him without provoking that brutality against her. “I’ll apologize that you had to see it, but I won’t apologize for protecting you.”

If he could have been anything else at that moment, he would have. Boba wished he could undo every twist of his life that had accustomed him to violence, trained him never to pull his punches, if only so that he didn’t have to see Yani trembling and breathing heavily in reaction. But, screw it, he’d done it all to survive and then to acquire such a fearsome reputation that people left him alone.

“Did you still harbor any illusions about the kind of man I was? Did you think most bounties came quietly?” Boba asked, advancing slowly. To Yani’s credit, she held her ground. “Do I frighten you, Yani?” As he stepped close, Yani flinched involuntarily.

And that—Boba’s stalk forward, Yani’s flinch—was what the stranger at the mouth of the alley saw. “Ma’am, is everything all right?”

The do-gooder was a Mandalorian, a real one, and this was  _ just _ what Boba needed. A kriffing Mandalorian (in shining armor, no less!) swooping in to save the day. The Mandalorians hated Boba for wearing their armor but refusing to live by their code. Interactions with the creed-following, community-centered clans were never pleasant because Boba’s values were so different from theirs. The stranger looked like a bounty hunter, too, but he was clearly an  _ honorable _ one, from the way he noticed a domestic dispute going south and immediately stepped in. It was like the universe had custom-designed a creature to highlight all Boba’s worst faults. This man was the savior Yani had wanted when she’d settled for Boba.

But Yani bared her fangs at the Mandalorian and hissed.

That was… unexpected.

“Yes!” she snarled. “Now back off!” She rounded on Boba, and now it was his turn to backtrack at her finger jabbing in his chest. “And you! You don’t get to spiral into self-depreciation every time I criticize you! I’m allowed to disapprove of things without fearing that you’ll take them so kriffing personally. We’re going.”

It might not have been Yani’s goal, but the outburst served to convince the Mandalorian that Yani wasn’t frightened of Boba, that this slip of a girl could hold her own against him, and the Mando didn’t follow when Yani grabbed Boba’s hand and dragged him in the opposite direction.

Was this love? Boba couldn’t imagine being more enamored with anyone than he was with Yani at that moment.

“Thank you for getting my bag back,” she said as she pulled him through the streets.

“You’re welcome.”

She paused. “I meant to return to the ship, but now I think I’m lost.”

“It’s this way.” Boba took the lead, though he didn’t let go of Yani’s hand. He wasn’t ready yet.

“Boba,” she said after a few minutes of walking in silence. “I don’t loathe you. You said that once, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

They halted so Boba could watch her face, the concerned earnestness. And he believed her despite the insistence of his own brain that he was loathsome.

Yani was already sharing his space, but she put her free hand on his chest, fingers digging into the fabric of his cloak. “You startle me, okay? And I think you could be better sometimes. But I don’t  _ hate _ you.”

Boba pulled her into a hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, Din will not be making another appearance in this fic. Yes, I think that's hilarious of me. But if you're interested in Din Djarin/Boba Fett/Reader threesome action, check out my smut series [Mechanics and Mandalorians.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2052387)


	14. Underwater

“Well, fuck you too, Karga,” Yani overheard. She climbed into the cockpit to see what had provoked this outburst.

Boba had a bounty hunting puck out with its information pulled up. At Yani’s appearance, he explained, “Karga gave me a shab puck. It’s for a bounty on Mon Cala, an ocean world.”

“I’m guessing that spaceships can’t go underwater? Why not?”

“They’re designed to fly in space, and sometimes in a planet’s air. So they’re intended to withstand, at most, a couple atmospheres of pressure from the outside. The design is more focused on keeping the pressure inside. Submersibles are structurally different—are built to withstand the intense external pressure of being underwater. If I want to go after this bounty, I’ll have to rent one, which will probably end up costing more than the bounty is worth.”

Yani sat on the floor with her legs crossed, fascinated. She would’ve thought, just intuitively, that spacecraft would be perfect for underwater travel—being airtight and all. But Boba’s explanation made a lot of sense. “What are you going to do? Will you take the bounty?”

Boba spun a few degrees to face her. “I want to get in Karga’s good graces, so yes. And as it so happens, this will be the perfect opportunity to teach you how to fly.”

“I thought you said we’d be leaving the spaceship behind.”

“Piloting spacecraft and subs is similar enough, at least for starting out. I don’t want to hand you control of the _Slave IV_ until I’m reasonably certain you won’t crash it immediately.” He smiled. “I was going to start you out in space where you can’t run into anything, but it’s difficult to tell speed and direction without landmarks. The parallax of stars is several orders of magnitude smaller than that of close-up objects.”

Yani understood all those words except ‘parallax,’ but she got enough of Boba’s meaning anyway.

Boba clapped his hands together. “So, underwater, where you’ll have a landscape to fly through, in a rented sub I don’t care about damaging, will be the perfect beginner practice.”

Excitement crawled up her spine like a living thing, straightening it in anticipation. She was going to pilot a sub. Boba was going to teach her how.

“You do,” he looked hesitant now, “you do want to learn, right? I’m not forcing this on you?”

“I want to learn _everything_ , Boba. Whatever you’ll teach me about space travel and survival skills and anything. I disarmed a _bomb_ the other day. It was your bomb, under your direction, and I was just typing in a disarm code, but it was still thrilling.”

“I’ll teach you whatever you want.” He settled his hands in his lap. “I keep forgetting that you were a slave. You’re so intelligent. Shavit, do you even know how to read?”

“Yeah. I was in school for five years, before.” _Don’t ask me about my time as a slave, please._

He didn’t. “Well, I would prefer if you avoided trying to disarm bombs in the future, unless absolutely necessary.”

Yani raised one hand and rested the other on her chest. “Cross my heart. I’ll do my best to avoid bombs for your peace of mind.”

“Considerate of you.” He swiveled back to the console. “Get over here, and I’ll show you how to chart a course through hyperspace.”

—

They left the _Slave IV_ at an above-ocean docking port floating on the water. Yani didn’t speak much as Boba negotiated for the rental of a small submersible shaped like a flying manta, taking in the smell of salt and the gruff busyness of the dock workers. She had a hard time reading the facial expressions of the aquatic species. The Quarren they were renting from spoke Basic, thankfully, so she could at least listen to the exchange. They could keep the sub for as long as needed, and they’d be charged per day once they returned.

“Do you know where to start looking?” Yani asked as they climbed into the vehicle. It was small, and it would get even smaller when a third person was squished aboard.

“I’m going to ask around in Bel City. That was the last known location. First we can practice piloting.” Boba took the ship away from the port and into bright-lit waters shallow enough to see the ocean floor. “Okay. Switch seats with me.”

Yani moved into the pilot’s chair, and Boba sat just to her side and a little behind.

“The controls are pretty basic. Forward thrusters, reverse thrusters, a joystick for steering. Over here are your pressure and air quality sensors and your fuel reserves, and you might want to glance at them every once in a while, but a modern craft will alert you if a number gets too high or too low. Any questions?”

“Nope! I’m ready.”

“Take it easy, now. Go slow.”

Yani nudged power into the forward thrusters, keeping a tight grip on the joystick, and the submersible eased forward. She left the thrusters at minimum power and practiced steering.

Boba was a shockingly good teacher. He was abrupt and to-the-point, correcting her technique but not enough to be annoying. His direction was simple and easy to implement.

Mostly she needed simple practice in feeling out the controls, gaining confidence to glide faster through the water. Boba directed her to a more interesting landscape on the way to Bel City. Yani turned on her headlights as she dove deeper, but Boba flipped them off.

“You won’t need them. Wait. There.”

They descended into a wide trench, and the rocks glowed with thin rivers and spots of bioluminescence. “Oh my gods,” Yani breathed. ‘Beautiful’ seemed too measly a word in comparison to this alien splendor. She slowed the sub to a crawl to better take it in. “Is this the kind of cave where I have to worry about a huge fish popping out and swallowing the ship?”

“Not here.”

Yani became aware of Boba’s hand on the back of her seat, the way he was leaned in slightly, looking out the viewport. She glanced over. Not looking out the viewport. Looking at her.

“You’re, um, you’re a quick study,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “On to Bel City.”


	15. The Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a fandom to this story since I’m taking inspiration from it: the Boba Fett trilogy by K. W. Jeter. You definitely don’t need to read the books to understand this fic, though, and I’m not going so far as to recommend them. They are a tad dated in their treatment of women and such (not terrible, just not great).

Boba tracked the quarry down easily enough. The Mon Calamari woman had been counting on the aquatic city’s remote location to conceal her. She surrendered at blasterpoint and sat, hands bound, in the back of the sub with resigned good humor. Boba piloted this time.

“So, how did you two meet?” she asked.

Yani inhaled to answer, but Boba stopped her. “Don’t speak to the merchandise.”

The Mon Calamari woman tilted her head back. “Merchandise? Is that how you think of bounties? That’s a fun little way to dehumanize us.” She shuffled around more, getting comfortable. “I’ve always found Basic words like that funny. Dehumanize. I’ve never been human in my life! The humanocentrism in this galaxy is unreal.”

Yani raised her eyebrows and made a small noise of agreement. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. At least I have a humanoid face.”

So she was just ignoring his commands now. Excellent.

“Yeah?” said the quarry, warming up to Yani. “I’d say you’ve got the sour end of the deal, hon. At least humans aren’t attracted to _me_. Can you imagine?”

Yani laughed out loud, then gave Boba an apologetic glance.

Boba didn’t know how to respond to this turn of events, to two alien women bonding over not being of his dominant species. Probably the best course of action was silence.

The merchandise didn’t try to bolt during the short trip from the submersible rental station to the ship, nor did she argue about being put in a cage. He took off her binders so she could use her hands.

Yani retreated deeper into the ship, giving Boba time alone with the merchandise. “Listen. You haven’t been much trouble so far, and I don’t expect you to be from now on, but just in case you were getting any ideas, drop them. I won’t tolerate escape or suicide attempts. You’ll find your journey a lot less pleasant if you try.”

She watched him with one large eye. “Why in the universe would I try to kill myself? I’ll be going away for ten years, fifteen at most.”

That was right—her final destination was a jail cell, not a torture chamber under a Hutt palace where droids would brutally pry her secrets from her. Boba had forgotten that he was doing Guild work, now. He’d like to keep Yani from learning about that particular detail of his past work if he could help it.

In orbit around Mon Cala, as Boba prepared to jump to hyperspace, the ship alerted him to an approaching object locked onto his ship. It was a long-distance probe meant for ferrying messages across the galaxy. But that was impossible; no one could track Boba’s ship well enough to know where to send a probe.

Except, perhaps, for the person who made it—the person who amused himself by hiding traps and tracking beacons for Boba to disable.

Boba gripped the steering joystick in white-knuckled hands. He could ignore the probe and jump to hyperspace anyway, but it would find him again. He could destroy it, shoot it now; that would be the safest option. What if the probe contained a bomb? That sort of obviousness wasn’t Kuat of Kuat’s style, but perhaps he’d changed. Boba was changing.

He wanted to know what was on it, though. Why would Kuat contact him directly like this? He opened the external airlock door and received the probe. After retrieving it, he carried it up to the cockpit, away from the merchandise. It was a simple metal ovaloid with a guidance computer and thruster, one seam running along its length to open it.

“What’s that?” Yani asked, entering the cockpit.

“Not sure. Put this on.” Boba handed her a gas mask, not wishing to take any risks. Well, besides the massive risk of admitting the probe in the first place.

“What about you?” Yani asked, donning the mask. The clunky machinery obscured the lower half of her face as if she were some alien species that required breathing apparatus to survive in an atmosphere hospitable to other creatures.

“Helmet,” he replied. Between its filters and the microsurgery he’d had done on his olfactory sensory receptors, Boba was nearly immune to airborne toxins. Boba pulled out his blaster, aimed at the probe, and unlocked the seal.

The probe’s top half hinged open to reveal a single flower bud in a pot. Even as they watched, the bud began to bloom—perhaps triggered by the fresh air from the _Slave IV_ —spreading petals of vibrant oranges and fuchsias. Stamen topped with crimson bundles of pollen rose from the center.

Boba recognized the flower from pictures. It was a fusillia orchid, an extremely rare, extremely expensive flower from the Parnabe sector known for blooming only a few minutes before dying. With the cost of the flower plus its careful transport through space, Boba could have bought another ship. Not a custom ship like the _Slave IV_ , but a spaceship nonetheless.

“That’s beautiful,” Yani exclaimed. “Who is it from?”

Boba peered into the probe and extracted a slip of flimsiplast. Upon it was written ‘ _For your pretty friend._ ’

Chills erupted over Boba’s skin as he beheld the words. There was an unwritten message: ‘I know about her, and I want you to know that I know.’ Kuat could have kept the intel a secret—after all, secrets were only valuable when their information was spread among as few heads as possible—but he’d chosen to reveal his knowledge to Boba. This was a threat. 

Boba handed Yani the flimsiplast. “It’s from Kuat of Kuat, the very powerful head of the company that built the Empire’s Star Destroyers and walkers. He knows about you.” He knew, of course, he knew. Boba hadn’t been careful at all. Quarries had seen Yani, he’d gone out in _public_ with her, he should’ve locked her in a sealed room and never let her out…

Yani held the flimsi in two hands, appropriately concerned. “Why would he care about me?”

“It’s my fault.” Boba sank into the pilot’s chair, groaning. “I brought this attention to you. I’m so sorry.” He owed her an explanation. “He and I have a history of trying to outwit each other, often with murder attempts. Like he ordered a bomb run near the Pit of Carkoon just in case I’d managed to escape the Sarlacc. But it’s never been serious—more like, like flirting or something with a peer we actually respect.”

“Flirting. Dropping bombs on you.”

“He wasn’t _really_ trying to kill me. I have a history of surviving things that other people don’t. I’d rather not test whether you have the same abilities.”

Yani wiped a hand back over her forehead and lekku. “Can’t you just break up with him?”

Boba tried to keep his voice from trembling. “I wish it were that simple. Can you imagine trying to break up with a person who designs weapons of mass destruction for a living, who has already made threats on your life?”

“Well, I don’t mind if you two continue whatever strange little dance you’ve got going on, as long as I can stay out of it. Do you think he wants to _flirt_ with me too?”

They both looked at the orchid, now beginning to wilt.

“Fuck,” Yani said.


	16. Send-Off

With a bitter taste in her mouth, Yani packed the wilted flower away, pressed it into a vacu-sealed packet to preserve it. When Boba told her how much the flower was worth, she nearly threw up. She could’ve bought the freedom of every slave she’d known on her home planet for the cost of this single plant that bloomed less than fifteen minutes.

She didn’t get off on Nevarro when Boba dropped off the quarry and collected his payment. He said he didn’t want to flaunt her presence, and that was fine; she wasn’t in the mood to be around people anyway.

Boba had been sullen and introspective since the probe delivered its gift. He replied when she spoke to him, but he didn’t start any conversations, so she initiated communication less and less. When he returned to the ship, she wanted to ask, ‘How did it go? How much were you paid? Did you get another puck?’ But she hadn’t spoken for hours and the words got stuck in her throat.

This Kuat of Kuat character unsettled her. She didn’t have a mental image of him, but she pictured sly eyes, a sly smile, long fingers manipulating strings like an arachnid at the center of a web. The kind of confidence necessary to send a flower and mean ‘Beware.’

Somehow, in all her picturings of Boba’s enemies, she’d been thinking of gruff, dirty men—other bounty hunters. But he was part of a cosmic story reaching from the late Emperor Palpatine and his Sith apprentice Darth Vader to the Rebels Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Boba Fett wasn’t merely a bounty hunter; he was on the level of kings and wizards.

And now she was part of that cosmic story, too. Most slave girls from the Outer Rim weren’t named and spoken of by influential beings they’d never met, as if they mattered. Yani had taken up with Boba Fett, and through him, her existence was significant.

How did she feel about that? Could she ever slip back into obscurity now that she’d had a taste of fame?

Absolutely. If fame on a galactic scale meant passive-aggressive gifts from beings who were worth thousands of her, she would gladly give up fame. She was used to vile attention from men, but that attention had fallen on her because she was nearer or slightly prettier than the girl next to her—because they wanted a slave girl, any slave girl. This attention from Kuat of Kuat was pointed. Unnerving in its specificity.

Boba descended into her living space, but he kept hold of the ladder. He addressed her for the first time. “I’m going to visit Kuat. I have to fix this.”

No, Kuat’s attention  _ wasn’t _ directed at her. She saw that with sudden clarity. It was directed at Boba. “You can’t. What if the point of sending that message was to get you riled up enough to confront him in person?”

“Of course it was.”

She sat up on her knees. “So you know it’s a trap, but you’re going anyway?”

“It’s a trap because if I don’t go, he’ll kill you. He forced my hand.”

The _Slave IV_ had always seemed formidable to Yani, but now it was a minuscule, inconsequential dot drifting through a galaxy that grew larger by the minute. They were facing an adversary who built _armadas_. Why had Boba pitted himself against beings who ruled planets and commanded armies? Did he think he was invincible?

He had been so far. The evidence pointed toward his invincibility. But one day, death would catch up with him. One day he’d fall into the mouth of a creature no one had ever escaped from and die just like every other mortal.

Boba climbed back up. Yani felt the moment the ship leapt into hyperspace—her heart leapt into her throat and stayed there even as their speed leveled out. She clutched the blankets around her, feeling just how  _ big _ the galaxy was that creatures needed to warp tremendous distances at faster-than-light speed. Just how small you could feel when enemies like Kuat of Kuat caught you in their sights.

She joined Boba once she’d caught a bit of sleep and calmed down. “How much longer until we arrive?”

“A few hours.” He sat on the floor of the cockpit, bolting a new chair into the ground. Maybe he’d gotten it on Nevarro.

The sight soothed her: Boba, unmasked, with tools all around him, installing a seat for her. It meant that whatever happened, he was planning on surviving it, on needing two chairs in the cockpit because both of them would be there.

His next words shocked that delusion back to reality. “There’s a safehouse on Dantooine. The coordinates are in the ship. You just have to press a few buttons, and it’ll get you there. I want you to give me four hours, and if I’m not back by then, leave. Speaking with me over a comm doesn’t count. Once I’m in there, he could put a blaster to my head and force me to contact you.”

“Don’t go,” Yani begged.

“I’m the reason you’re in danger. It’s my job to fix the mistake I made.”

“What mistake? Keeping me around?” He hadn’t done anything wrong; he’d been kind to her.

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate or clarify that he didn’t regret letting Yani stay with him. “Now, I’ll command the ship from my vambrace to head into orbit once I’ve entered the Shipyards. I’ll call it back to get me once I’m finished.”

Perfect. She’d be entirely out of control, agonizing over how long it had been, and then the ship would suddenly start moving on its own. That wouldn’t be terrifying at all.

Maybe it was due to his impending absence, the giant risk he would be taking on her behalf, but Yani’s lust for Boba hit a boiling point. Even when he donned the armor, his body language was so strained that it made Yani crazy. She desperately wanted to comfort him, to send him off with sex. She wanted to bruise her knees for him, feel the heavy warmth of his cock filling her mouth.

He brushed past her in the kitchen hall, and she longed to press herself against him. She knew it would likely be a fast, desperate, silent fuck, just Boba rutting into her until he finished, no romance—but gods, she  _ wanted _ that. She didn’t care if she didn’t come. She didn’t care if he took off the armor or just freed his dick from his pants and fucked her clothed.

They were running out of time. There was so much to say: ‘Thank you for rescuing me,’ and ‘I’m sorry that you’re putting yourself in danger for me,’ and ‘Please, please come back.’ But she didn’t trust herself to open her mouth, scared she would confess all the lewd thoughts jumbling through her head.

Tension read in every line of his body, like Boba was projecting the need to be fucked. Was she reading into things, seeing what she wanted to see? Or could others sense it too?

She wanted to beg him, ‘Let me make you come, just once.’ But then he was landing, and it was too late. He was gone.


	17. The Technician

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reading _The Bounty Hunter Wars_ (a book trilogy starring Boba Fett), I was like, “The chemistry between these two is unreal. Did the author intend this?” *looks him up and sees that he is an old white man* “Probably not. Oh boy, am I about to misrepresent his works SO hard.” *rubs hands together gleefully*

Boba stood in silence in front of the Kuat Drive Yards reception desk until the clerk was shifting uncomfortably in her seat. The reception room, like all those on the Kuat Drive Yards Orbital Shipyards intended for public viewing, was architecturally impressive. An engineering company had to show off at every opportunity. The Shipyards formed an artificial ring around the planet Kuat, stunningly visible from the surface, making the name of the planet almost synonymous with its industrial outputs.

“Can I help you?” the clerk asked at last.

“I want to see the Technician.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. The Technician is a very busy man who doesn’t take walk-in appointments.” At Boba’s continued silence, she elaborated, “He’s in one of his meditative moods, and we know better than to disturb him. They produce the most inspired ideas—”

He cut her off. “Interrupt his brooding. Tell him Boba Fett’s here to see him.”

She pursed her lips at his audacity. “One moment, please.”

Boba waited while she disappeared through a door behind the desk. He had to confront Kuat, to convince him to leave Yani and him alone. Of course Boba would miss interactions with the charismatic heir of House Kuat and Kuat Drive Yards, but Yani was more important than whatever enigmatic scheming he and Kuat had exchanged in the past.

How would he pull this off? Straight up tell Kuat, ‘I’ll stop halfheartedly trying to kill you if you do the same?’ Boba didn’t understand their relationship enough. Kuat might as soon decide to kill Boba for real as call a truce with him.

The clerk returned, suddenly treating Boba with greater deference. “He’ll see you. If you’ll please follow me.” She ushered Boba through the halls, past workers in green coveralls. Kuat wore the same outfit as his underlings when mingling with his workers so they could see that he was one of them. That and his preferred form of address, ‘Technician’ rather than ‘my lord,’ was part of a grand show of humility meant to remind people that, though his ownership of Kuat Drive Yards was hereditary, he’d retained it through merit.

The clerk took Boba to a grand door of patterned durasteel, upon which she knocked twice.

A man in a turban answered. “Is this Fett?”

“Obviously,” Boba said.

The man squinted and turned up his nose. “Just so you know, the Technician has many ways of signaling for help, and it will arrive instantaneously. Don’t even think about—”

“Let him in, Fenald,” came a smooth voice from beyond the doorway. “And then leave us. I would speak to him alone.”

“Your judgment prevails, Technician.” He and the clerk stepped around Boba, casting many looks back at him, and departed.

Boba breathed deeply and opened the door.

The audience chamber was spacious, extravagant, with a ceiling multiple times his height. The far wall was entirely comprised of viewscreens, windows looking out on the vast network of machinery that were the facilities and construction docks of Kuat Drive Yards. Beyond them, scattered in the inky blackness, glowed millions of points of stars. A sitting area faced a high-tech holoprojector, and a liquor stand featured exotic, twisting bottles. Kuat’s desk sat at the opposite end of the room, and Kuat’s simple throne, behind it, was turned toward the windows.

“You must forgive my head of security’s paranoia. But such traits are ingrained in the profession.” Kuat of Kuat swiveled his throne to face the entryway.

“Your workers are certainly loyal to you.”

“I pay well for their loyalty. You of all sentient creatures understand that loyalty is a commodity. I told them that if ever anyone offers them money to betray me or this company, they should come to me, and I’ll top the offer.” A smile split Kuat’s face, and he rose. “Boba. How long has it been since we both stood together in the flesh?”

“Several Standard Years, at least,” Boba said.

How had Boba forgotten how  _ tall _ he was? The other man had a good ten inches on him, his lean figure accentuated by embroidered robes of red and brown and the traditional stiff Kuati hat. Today wasn’t one for mingling with subordinates, then. But even in his Technician coveralls, he would have exuded elegance and sophistication. He had skin like brass and slanted eyes that took in their surroundings with careful precision. Earrings in the shape of dangling crescent moons tinkled as Kuat walked.

Why did Kuat have to be so tall? Why did he have to be  _ handsome _ on top of clever and rich and powerful? His appearance was just another level of danger, and he wielded it like a weapon.

Kuat sauntered forward. “Let’s talk about _slaves_.”

Yani. Panic crippled Boba. Kuat knew about her, could manipulate Boba by threatening her, Kuat knew how much she meant to him.

But Kuat veered toward the holoprojector and pulled up a three-dimensional model of the _Slave IV_ , enlarging it with a hand gesture until it filled the room in that way he liked. They now stood immersed in a detailed blueprint of the ship.

Boba’s shoulders sagged. Kuat hadn’t meant Yani but the ship. He could’ve still been referring to her in a backhanded way—something about the way he’d lingered on the word ‘slave’ bespoke a double meaning.

Kuat’s eyes glittered in the light from the surrounding hologram. “I’ve always adored this craft. It’s such a perfect extension of your soul.” He tapped on a section of engine that exploded into close-ups of its pieces. “Seeing it like this is like seeing you stripped naked.”

“I’m not here to discuss my ship.”

“What a shame. I had some new ideas for improvements we could make.” Kuat collapsed the engine and touched an outer hull panel. “First off, replace panel 36. Hidden in the inner lining is a sheet of toxic material that would’ve released into the air upon puncture. I’d like to apologize for that one. As traps go, it was uninspired. Impossible to predict or control.”

Damn, he hadn’t caught that one.  _ Embedded inside the durasteel. _ That was good. “Why do I still contract with you anyway, when you admit to sabotage?”

Kuat grinned. “You like the challenge. Challenge is a novelty for you these days, a precious limited commodity. And so it is for me. Would you like to hear my idea for improving thruster capacity by nine percent?”

“Another time. I want to discuss the package you sent me.”

“Ah.” Kuat’s demeanor lost its jocundity. He poured himself a glass of orange wine from the liquor stand. “Want some?”

“No.”

Kuat took a drink, leaning on the stand and staring at the blank wall as if reading text there. “In our decades of acquaintanceship, you have never shown any inclination to settle down. I thought that my patience would serve me well in my efforts to win your favor. But patience is an over-lauded virtue, it seems.

“Now you’re finally here, in my home, and you’ve come not of your own volition but on behalf of your new lover. Despite all the lip-service I’ve given to retaining humility, this is the first truly humbling thing to happen to me.”

What was going on? Kuat had never been so brazen with him before. Boba started reevaluating all their previous interactions in a new light.

Kuat glanced his way. “Intellectual stimulation wasn’t enough for you?”

It had been. Before Yani, his rivalry with Kuat was one of the most enjoyable parts of his life. He might even have considered… But now, if Kuat saw Yani as competition, that could be disastrous for her. “If you hurt her in any way—”

“The only question is whether harming her would bring me any closer to my own goals.”

What goals were those? Surely Kuat knew that Yani was Boba’s first choice; there was little chance of winning Boba over, at this point.  _ I might not be her first choice, though. _ “What can I say to convince you to leave her alone?”

“That you picture my cock when you’re all alone in the black.”

Boba barely managed to keep his breathing under control.  _ Gods. _

Kuat smirked. Took another sip. “You shouldn’t have dropped the codpiece from your ensemble. It’s an improvement as far as aesthetics are concerned, but it reveals far too much of what you’re thinking.”

“I could just kill you, instead. Remove the threat.”

“Not here, not now, at least. You would never escape this facility. The moment my heart ceased beating, implanted chips would relay the fact, and then the entire might of the Kuati armada would be on your tail. Come.” He brought the wine bottle and an extra glass over to the sitting area. “Let’s discuss this like civilized beings.”

Boba hesitated. Kuat’s supposed lust for him could all be an elaborate act intended to disarm him. This could be a trap. But he needed to come to some sort of resolution with Kuat, and he felt like they could. There was so much history, so much mutual understanding between two beings playing at the top of their game for so long.

Boba sat down beside Kuat of Kuat on the couch.


	18. Kuat of Kuat

The couch was wide and soft, a seat meant for lounging, but Boba sat ramrod straight.

Kuat flicked off the holoprojection of Boba’s ship. With the blue glow’s absence, the room seemed over-dim, illuminated mostly by the artificial lights of the factory yards seen through the windows. Kuat poured a second glass of the orange wine, but Boba didn’t take it, so Kuat set it on the holoprojector’s table. “How goes the bounty hunting business?” he asked, taking another sip of his own wine. “I hear you’re working pro bono now. Decided to switch sides, then?”

“I’ve never been on anyone’s side but my own.” That was less true recently. Boba didn’t know what he was doing any longer. He wanted to impress Yani, to keep her with him, but he was floundering.

“I’ve always admired that about you.” Kuat was so close to Boba, his voice low and silky-smooth. Boba couldn’t recall ever being this near to him alone. Their relationship was built on moves and counter moves made halfway across the galaxy.

He wanted to get Kuat in a good mood so he’d be more receptive to Boba’s truce proposal. “You’re the same way,” he said. “Ruthless in your drive to get what you want.”

“I flatter myself that I am. Kuat Drive Yards is eternal,” he drew out the last word like a promise. “I will keep it independent no matter the cost.”

“Have you ever thought about,” Boba winced, fearing that he was revealing too much, but he needed to hear Kuat’s opinion, “what it would be like to be the good guy?”

Kuat leaned his face on one hand, elbow braced against the back of the couch. “To whom have you been speaking? The Rebels with their simple-minded idealism?”

“Gods, no. If you ever catch me teaming up with Luke fucking Skywalker, do me a favor and shoot me in the head.”

“The problem with their worldview is that they see events in the galaxy as a story where there are heroes and villains. But the galaxy is much bigger and more complicated than fits into their neatly-spliced delineations. They kill their enemies at the same rate we do, but justify it to themselves by labeling them ‘Other,’ ‘evil.’ Anyone who works for the Hutts or the Empire is _bad_ , and any good person has a right to do away with them if it furthers their own cause. By their reckoning, most denizens of the Outer Rim are fair game, simply because they are too poor to have any other options. Should every Klatooinian be killed for the crime of having a dog-like face, of being born to a culture in historical servitude to the Hutts?”

Boba had seen too much of the galaxy’s slums to argue. Everyone fought for survival in their own way.

“As for me, I have sworn to preserve what my ancestors built—to retain neutrality and contract with whoever pays regardless of political affiliations. If that makes me a villain, then so be it.”

“No,” Boba grinned beneath the helmet, “you’re a villain because you set up spy equipment in important rooms where confidential meetings occur.”

“What can I say? I like to be well-informed.”

“And because your rivals turn up with poisonous microdroids in their bloodstream.”

Kuat matched his dry grin.

Around Kuat, Boba relaxed a muscle he hadn’t known was clenched. Murder and avarice were concepts with which he was well-acquainted. With Yani, he had to be so _good_ all the time, and he wanted to be, but maintaining such a drastic change was exhausting. This, this was familiar deep in his bones.

“Take off the helmet,” Kuat said. “I want you to try the wine.”

That was Boba’s biggest mistake. He obeyed, setting the helmet on the table, but he didn’t want to risk the chance that Kuat had slipped some of those microdroids into his glass, so he grabbed Kuat’s from his hand and took a drink.

It was a mistake because now Kuat could slide closer, one leg tucked up on the couch, and Boba could feel his breath on his skin. Kuat could clutch Boba’s chin, keeping his face turned forward as he spoke into Boba’s neck. “You’d do anything for her, wouldn’t you? Even sleep with me to persuade me of her inconsequence.”

Boba wished Kuat hadn’t mentioned her. The thought of Yani now racked him with guilt because if he slept with Kuat now, it wouldn’t be with Yani in mind. They _weren’t_ together. He didn’t even know if she wanted to be. Maybe if he told Kuat that, he would be convinced to leave them alone.

Kuat’s nose brushed Boba’s neck.

“What are we doing?” Boba asked, closing his eyes.

“Whatever we please. We’ve risen to the top of our respective fields, and I say we’ve earned the right to enjoy ourselves. What else would we do with our success?” Kuat set the wineglass aside and straddled Boba’s lap.

Boba wanted to ask, why him? Why would Kuat want the clone with the scars when he could’ve ordered ten perfect, younger versions of Boba to fuck at his leisure? Laboratories across the galaxy still had his father’s DNA, and some of them had to be using it.

But Kuat undoubtedly wanted him. His expression was ravenous. If Yani lusted after him, it was quieter, uncertain he’d reciprocate. Boba wasn’t used to being the object of such fierce, unapologetic desire.

What turned Boba on the most, what made his dick press uncomfortably against his zipper, was when Kuat spoke so passionately about his company. So Boba said, “You called Kuat Drive Yards eternal. When most beings use that word, their heads are getting too big, and their downfall will be soon. Why are you so sure?”

“Because I am one in a chain of Kuats of Kuat who have passed on their wisdom and singular vision. Because the Empire, the Rebellion, and the New Republic have all tried and failed to take the Shipyards from me. Because even the downfall of this company would be a success so long as it never fell into an outsider’s hands. I would sooner burn this factory and everyone aboard down to their constituent atoms than let another obtain control. _I would burn down with them._ ”

Boba crushed his mouth to Kuat’s, fumbling with the ties of the other man’s pants.

Kuat licked past his lips. When Boba got his cock out, he groaned and tilted Boba’s chin up to kiss his throat. “Take off this armor. Take off everything.”

Boba didn’t hesitate to strip, dropping articles of clothing on the ground without care.

Kuat stood over him, removing layers until he wore just a single robe, open at the front to expose his firm chest. As soon as Boba was naked, Kuat laid him down on the couch, tangling their tongues again and dragging a hand up Boba’s thigh. “How long since you’ve been fucked?” he asked.

Years. By any solar count, it had been years. “A long time.”

“Soon I’ll have you begging for it.” Kuat kissed his way down Boba’s chest. He mouthed at Boba’s balls, licking around them, and produced a bottle of lube from somewhere. He coated his fingers then circled Boba’s hole.

When Kuat slid a thick finger inside, Boba bit his lip to hold back a whimper. His body wasn’t used to the stretch, but it felt extraordinary.

Kuat worked him open slowly, so slowly that he crossed the line between ‘taking his time’ and ‘being a tease.’

“Kuat,” Boba growled. He knew what Kuat wanted to hear, and he had no trouble saying it if it would end this torture. “Please fuck me.” Anything to finally feel Kuat’s dick sliding into him.

It was better than fingers, better than jacking off on his own, nearly enough to make him forget Yani waiting for him back on the ship. Kuat knew how to use his cock. He altered angles until he found the spot that made Boba gasp and concentrated his thrusts there. With slick fingers, he stroked Boba’s dick between them.

Why hadn’t they done this before? Why hadn’t this happened before Boba had decided to improve himself, when he could’ve relished the feel of Kuat’s body without thinking about all the terrible things he’d done? Kuat’s revelation that he would rather kill thousands of workers than see them under someone else’s rule would have turned Boba on even more; in some ways, it still did, and did that mean that all of Boba’s progress was null?

Kuat thrust into him hard. “Does your _woman_ make you feel this good?”

“She’s not… We haven’t…” Boba couldn’t get the words out.

“Oh,” Kuat purred, coming to a standstill. He squeezed the base of Boba’s cock to really pause while he considered this new information, calculating. “How intriguing.”

Boba squirmed, desperate for the friction to resume, and Kuat finally gave in, leaning over Boba with his weight on his left hand. It was so _good_ , and Boba was a needy mess underneath him.

“Look at you,” Kuat said. “The mighty Boba Fett.”

Boba had cast aside his armor and weapons, bared himself for an enemy. He deserved whatever came to him, now. “Just get on with it. Kill me if you’re going to.”

“You think I want you dead?” Kuat released his dick to whip out a weapon from his sleeve—pointed, like a long, thick needle. Kuat set the tip against Boba’s chest at the perfect angle to slide into his heart. “Just to prove I could.” Then he dropped the spike over the edge of the couch. It clattered on the floor.

As Kuat took hold of his dick again, Boba couldn’t help thrusting up into his grasp. He was so close.

“I don’t want you dead, Boba,” Kuat said, picking up the pace like he could sense how near Boba was to finishing. “I want you just like this, until eternity runs out.”

Boba spilled all over his chest.


	19. Walk of Shame

Kuat sighed as he thrust loosely in Boba’s cum-filled ass, his cock softening.

The enormity of Boba’s mistake hit him all at once. What had he done? What had he been thinking, fucking Kuat? Kuat had threatened Yani, the woman Boba was falling in love with, and Boba had jumped into his bed like he’d been dying to do it.

Kuat stilled, his gorgeous face tilted back in ecstasy, then heaved a deep breath and opened his eyes. “You’re magnificent,” he said, trailing two fingers through the cum on Boba’s chest.

“I need to go.”

He swirled around Boba’s nipple. “I’ll clean you up. Do you want a rag or my tongue?”

“A rag.” Boba needed to leave as soon as possible. He did not need to draw out this encounter any longer.

“A pity,” Kuat said. He stood and fetched a rag from some nearby refresher.

Boba snatched it out of his hand when he returned and wiped the cum off his chest. Gods of the Great Vacuum, he was in trouble. Would Kuat now be expecting more of a relationship from him? What was he going to tell Yani?

If she found out, it would feel like such a betrayal. Because shavit, it _was_ a betrayal. Boba had come here to negotiate for her safety, and two minutes in, all he could think of was Kuat’s imposing height and striking features. No, he wouldn’t tell Yani what had happened. How Boba had begged for Kuat’s cock and how much he’d _enjoyed_ it.

Boba pointedly didn’t look at Kuat as he pulled on his clothes. Maybe some good could still come of this situation. If Kuat thought he was getting closer to Boba (much closer), perhaps he would view Yani as less of a threat.

“Was it so bad that you need to run immediately?” Kuat didn’t sound concerned as he lounged on the couch. In fact, he sounded smug, like he could hear all Boba’s thoughts.

“You know it wasn’t.” Boba strapped on his boots.

“We should do it again sometime.”

Boba paused. He couldn’t say ‘yes’ without further betraying Yani. He couldn’t say ‘no’ without angering Kuat. So he tried to convey conflicted emotions with his silence, which wasn’t difficult.

“Go on. Return to her side, return to the ship that you and I designed together and just _try_ not to think of me.”

Boba took one more look at Kuat’s lean form draped over the couch, the robe falling open at his chest, and yanked open the door.

Could everyone tell, as he stalked back through the facility, that Boba was a man who’d just been fucked? Were his clothes rumpled? Was his gait uneven, a result of being pounded between the legs? He thought he caught a jealous glare from a young man standing by a marble pillar, but was that because Boba had gotten time alone with their sovereign or because the man knew what he’d done with it?

Burning with shame, glad for the umpteenth time for the coverage of his helmet, Boba hurried back to the docks.

—

Yani waited with a pounding heart for Boba’s return. He called her over the comlink to let her know that he was bringing the ship back, and then it piloted itself to the docks (or, Boba was piloting it from his vambrace).

The door irised open, and Boba grunted in greeting before heading to the cockpit. As he brushed past her, she got a whiff of some spicy scent, but he climbed the ladder before she could ask him about it.

Boba lifted the ship out of the docking bay and urged it away from the planet Kuat with its ring of factories. Was he going to tell her how the meeting went, or just leave her hanging?

Yani crossed her arms and stood beside Boba’s chair. When he didn’t address her, she asked, “Why do you smell like expensive cologne?”

Boba’s head shot up. He touched the side of his helmet and mumbled, “Linalool, ethyl alcohol, citrus oils. Commonly found in perfumes. _Shavit_.”

That was… strange. “What are you doing?”

“Reading the air compositional data from my helmet.” His hand dropped. “A long time ago, I had black market microsurgeons cut off my olfactory sensory receptors from my nervous system, so that airborne toxins couldn’t bond with them and affect me. Unfortunate side effect: I no longer have a sense of smell. Or much of taste.”

Yani blinked rapidly, storing this insane information away for later contemplation. (Boba couldn’t smell anything? Boba had taken surgical precautions against airborne poison, at the expense of his sense of smell?) The more important issue right now was where Boba had acquired cologne since leaving the ship. “What happened in there?”

Boba shrank into himself, turning away from her. “I’m sorry,” he said, quiet.

And Yani understood.

Her blood thumped in her ear cones. Holding tears at bay, she backtracked out of the cockpit and descended to her bed. Only once she had her face pressed into a pillow to muffle the sound did she let herself sob.

Boba had slept with Kuat of Kuat, or at least gotten close enough for the other man’s cologne to rub off on his skin. Boba had done it even after Kuat had threatened her with that flower. Had it been a threat? Everything was jumbled now. Perhaps Yani was missing details that would clarify the picture.

But that didn’t hurt as much as the fact that Boba had slept with someone who _wasn’t her_. True, he had never explicitly said that he was interested in her, but Yani wanted it so badly, and they had been making progress in that direction. Or hadn’t they? Had she just been a stupid, lovestruck fool seeing what she wanted to see? Was Boba’s perceived interest in her the result of too much time spent shut up in a spaceship with one other person?

Her sobs halted all at once and her stomach twisted as another possibility occurred to her. Boba wasn’t attracted to women. Sure, he had been affectionate to her, in his own gruff, awkward way, but that meant he was warming up to her as a friend and companion, not a sexual partner.

How had she misread everything so badly? How had she projected her own desires on reality and missed the signs? Fnarling, scrapping rustbuckets, if Boba was only into men, then there was no hope for her at all.


	20. Apology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all. I had a wild day because it's been snowing for a while. The day began with not getting enough sleep because I was up all night running hot water so the taps wouldn't freeze, and then there was a power outage, and then the power came back but the sprinklers in my apartment hallway started gushing. So I was trying to dam up the front door so no water would leak in, and the neighbors and I were sweeping the water into the stairwell until the company could shut off water to the apartment complex to fix the burst pipes. Overall, I'm exhausted, and writing this chapter was a nice escape. But if you guys want to send a little extra love my way in the form of comments, I would appreciate it. :'D <3

Yani sat in the dark with her legs pulled up and her head on her arms. How long could she stick around if she knew that Boba wasn’t going to reciprocate her feelings, ever? Could she bear to keep living with him, day after day, pining away in unrequited love? Where else could she go? She’d become so dependent on him.

At least she could stick around longer to learn more of those skills he’d promised to teach her. She’d feel a lot better about her independence if she knew how to fly a spaceship, for example. And since he wasn’t kicking her out yet, why not take advantage of the free lessons?

Boba knocked on the metal above her, announcing his presence, but he didn’t descend the ladder. “Yani? I’m here to apologize.” He waited a few seconds, but she didn’t answer. “I made a mistake with Kuat, and I know that. I’m sorry for hurting you.”

“You can come down here if you’d like.”

Boba climbed into her room, jumping from the penultimate rung onto the ground. He knelt across from her, as far back as the tiny space would allow, and put his hands in his lap. “I don’t have an excuse,” he said.

And oh, the gritty drawl of his voice still did things to her, that accent she couldn’t place. Now she was thinking of everything she found attractive about him—the sight of him shirtless, the skin of his back under her hands, the time he’d taken down that thief, and part of her had been horrified but part of her had been enthralled by the brute physicality of his movements. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

“My brain just short-circuited around him,” Boba explained. “You can be certain I won’t go back there alone.”

“I was so worried about you,” Yani said. “I was pacing around the ship, freaking out that you were going to be killed, agonizing over what was going on. You should’ve told me that you’d be  _ just fine _ with Kuat.”

Pain creased his features. “I’m sorry. Truly. How can I make it up to you?”

Yani buried her face in her hands and took a steadying breath. She didn’t kriffing know. Why was it on her to come up with a solution to fix this?

“Are you…” Boba stopped, then started again. “Do you have a problem with the fact that I like men?”

She met his eyes too quickly. Had he guessed that the deeper reason she was upset was the fact that he wasn’t into her?

“I see.” Boba scowled. “I would’ve thought you’d be more open-minded.”

“No! That’s not it.” Could she reassure him without completely exposing her true feelings? She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t leave Boba thinking she didn’t accept his sexuality. “I just… I’m sorry, this is awful. Are you interested in women as well?”

“Male, female, neutrois—I’m not picky.” Boba stared at her. “Is there a reason you’re asking?”

He was so thick. Did she have to spell it out for him? She couldn’t. Not right now when she was emotionally overwrought.

He just kept talking, filling the awkward silence with awkward speech. “I haven’t had the most prolific dating career. A lot of creatures hate or fear me by reputation. Others want me badly, but just once. They want to fuck Boba Fett as a story to tell their friends. And that, well, it gets old.” He traced a seam on the floor. “I’m not used to romance. What I had with Kuat was the closest thing, and even that was… a strange version.”

Yani thought she understood. “I get it, why you slept with him. He was familiar, but you hadn’t seen him in a long time, and I imagine he was throwing himself at you, which probably felt nice.”

Boba nodded.

“I don’t blame you.” His talk of romance, though—could that be a hint that despite everything, he was interested in her? That he wanted to give romance a try, but he didn’t know how to do it properly? “Do you  _ want _ to date someone, not just engage in one-night stands?”

He heaved a sigh. “Hard to know, since I’ve never tried it. But I think so.”

“I doubt Kuat can give you something that lasts.”

Boba chuckled. “He’s all about things that last. His people worship him like a god for being part of a technological dynasty. He goes on about the eternal nature of Kuat Drive Yards and the Kuat of Kuat title. If you ask me, he needs to start having kids if he wants that title passed on.”

Maybe Boba wasn’t as enamored with Kuat as she feared. At least he could jokingly criticize him. “Don’t look at me. I’m not interested in being a broodmare for some self-obsessed human dude. He can send all the flowers he wants.”

Boba laughed. She made him laugh. “I would never, ever leave you alone with him. I value your life too highly.”

Yani burrowed her face back into her arms, leaving just her eyes peeking out. “Thanks. I value your life too.”

There was so much more to say, but none of it felt right. Yani had grieved over the loss of a potential relationship with Boba, but now that potential had returned. He was attracted to women, at least.

“What species are you into?” she asked because it was the closest inquiry to ‘Do you like me?’ she could handle right now.

He shuffled from his kneeling position into a sitting one, getting more comfortable. “Humans, obviously. Most near-humans. I think everybody likes Twi’leks and Togrutas. I fucked a bug, once. She asked me to keep the helmet on, which I was fine with, but the experience wasn’t one of my better ones, and I vowed no more insectoids. How about you?”

“It was mostly humans and Kubaz on Taris. I messed around with the other Twi’lek girls, and those were some of my best sexual experiences.”

“Are you a lesbian?”

“I’m definitely into men as well. But fewer of them.”  _ You’re one. _

Boba nodded.

“What do we do now? Is Kuat still after us?”

“I doubt it. I think I’ve staved him off, for now at least.”

For now. Yani had no doubt that they would hear from Kuat of Kuat again.


	21. Flight Lesson

Boba didn’t know how to fix the damage he’d done. Yani had been just as hurt as he’d suspected she would be, and he deserved to be tormented by her reaction. Her eyes had been red from crying. She’d tilted her head away and drawn her limbs together in a position of instinctual safeguarding.

Boba and Yani spent about three Standard days circling one another. Whenever they crossed paths on the ship, Boba couldn’t turn away from her, like a tide-locked moon. He wanted to make sure she was all right. Even when things seemed to return to normal, Boba worried that it was a temporary lull or that she was acting like she was fine to preserve his feelings.

The hours of monotonous space travel dragged by as they pursued another quarry. What activity could he do with her that wasn’t sexual, that would show he was interested in rekindling their friendship, and that wouldn’t come across as strange?

Boba cleared his throat to get Yani’s attention. “Would you be interested in another flying lesson?”

“Sure. That sounds like fun.” She set down the datapad with which she’d been playing. “Are we going to practice on another planet?”

“No, just in space.” In the cockpit, he sat in the pilot’s chair and told her to sit on top of him. “This is how my father taught me,” he said. “Those are some of my best memories of him.”

Yani obediently perched in his lap, her weight pleasantly heavy.

Boba swiveled to face the viewscreens. “Okay. This is a unique ship to fly because of its vertical orientation. The most difficult part will be takeoff and landing, which you have to do on your back, so we’ll save that for later.”

“Sounds good.”

He spent some time introducing her to the various switches and controls on the console, asking her to repeat their functions. Then he showed her how to work the steering joystick between their legs. He helped her get the feel of the controls by guiding her hands under his as he took the ship on a winding path. Finally, he gave her control, letting her pilot it where she wished. “Remember,” he said, “out in space, objects will just keep moving until something stops them. So if you like your current speed and direction, you don’t have to give the thrusters more fuel.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

She was surprisingly good. Well, he shouldn’t say he was surprised; Yani was clever and quick. She’d never piloted a submersible before, and on her first experience, she drove it all by herself. And now, she moved the  _ Slave IV’s _ joystick with intuitive grace.

Yani’s competence and proximity were pulling his thoughts in uninvited directions. She was so _close_. He could press his lips to the column of her throat with ease, slip a hand down her pants and feel her getting wet as he rubbed her folds.

Boba recognized his error. In his mind, teaching someone to fly had no sexual undertones because he’d experienced it with his father as a child. But setting a kid in your lap and setting a grown woman in your lap were two  _ entirely _ different things, as Boba was discovering far too late. He needed to calm himself down before Yani felt the evidence of how badly he wanted to be inside her. Gods, she would be so warm and tight around his cock.

A distraction. He needed a distraction. “Pause for a moment. I set up a simulation for you.” Boba reached around her to pull up a saved scenario on the screen in front of him. A red grid popped up with a dot representing the  _ Slave IV _ at its center. “Okay. This field shows whatever nearby objects the ship is picking up on radar. I know that it’s flat, while space is in three dimensions, but these tiny indicators show if an object is above or below. You’ll get used to reading it at a glance and visualizing where everything is around you.” Flying and fighting in the huge openness of the black, where ships could approach from all sides, required tremendous spatial awareness.

“On this screen,” he continued, “I can also run scenarios to practice targeting.” Training with make-believe enemies on the radar was decent enough practice for the real thing, especially because the computer could fabricate endless scenarios. It taught Boba to navigate with the radar’s help without needing the ship’s windows. If you relied on your viewscreen, you could only see what was happening in a single direction.

“I get to shoot some other ships?”

“Yes, and—”

“Kriff, yeah!” Yani nearly vibrated with excitement.

Boba smiled. “And first I’m going to show you a simple maneuver I want you to try using. So you’re flying in a straight line with a pursuant behind you.” He demonstrated with his hands. “You curve up and make a quick loop to come around behind them, and then you have an open shot. Got it?”

“Got it!”

“We’ll try flying the loop first. Buckle up.” Fastening the straps around both him and Yani could’ve been worse. Sure, she was pressed tight to his chest now, but with little room for movement came few chances to slide hands into her clothes, or think about doing so. Plus, Boba was focusing on the task at hand. “All right. I’ll hold the joystick with you the first time, and then you can do it on your own.”

One smooth loop and a slightly less smooth loop later, Boba started up the simulation. Now the computer screen read that there was a single ship chasing them. It fired a couple of times but missed.

Yani executed the loop beautifully, ending directly behind the enemy ship and squeezing a trigger on the joystick to fire. Three bolts of energy erupted into space; through the windows, they could see the bolts continue into the distance, but on the radar screen, the enemy ship wavered and disappeared. A hit.

“Take that, mudscuffers!” Yani shouted.

She’d done it in one try. Perfectly, without waste of fire or unnecessary movement. Boba’s dick twitched in his pants—

And Boba held his breath, praying to every god he’d ever disrespected that Yani hadn’t felt it.

No such luck. She stilled, wiggled her hips experimentally, and hummed in satisfaction. “That made you hard? I bet if that had been a real ship that I took down, you would’ve come in your pants.”

Boba breathed unsteadily. Just a few days ago, Yani had curled up and cried because of him, and now she was flirting. There was no other way to describe it. She was actually receptive to his advances, actually attracted to him enough that she hadn’t taken offense at his erection but  _ flirted _ with him.

Was he possibly reading this situation accurately? If he came onto her, would she let him take her to bed? He had craved this so desperately for so long, and now it was finally in his reach, and he didn’t know what to say.

Boba tested the waters by resting a hand on Yani’s knee.

She arched her back slightly, just as much as the seat buckles would let her, her face turning to a profile so Boba could see her blown pupils.

A blaster shot rocked the ship.


	22. Battle

It had been going so well for Yani. She’d come so scruffing close to getting into Boba’s pants, and then the mood had been ruined in an instant by the onset of blasterfire.

Boba jumped to attention. “Give me control,” he snapped. “Close your eyes.”

Yani lifted her hands from the joystick in a surrendering gesture and shut her eyes, peeved by the command. Did he think she was too innocent to watch him attack other ships? Did he think she was too weak to behold carnage?

Her annoyance dissipated immediately when there came a flash of light so bright that she saw it even behind closed eyelids, and _oh_ , he had told her to shut them so she wouldn’t be blinded by whatever flare charge he’d just unleashed.

Almost at the same instant, Yani was flung forward and would’ve hit the  _ Slave IV’s _ curved window if she hadn’t been strapped in place. Boba had engaged the reverse thrusters to send them careening backward out of the line of fire.

“Didn’t see them coming because the simulation was pulled up,” Boba muttered.

Yani didn’t want to distract him with a response, and she didn’t have one anyway. Now the situation sort of felt like her fault for getting a lesson at the wrong time, even though she knew that was silly. Yani risked a peek—the light was fading—and saw that Boba had switched the radar display back to the real one. It showed two dots that appeared to be moving away from the center, but looking out the windows, she saw that the  _ Slave IV _ itself was still flying backward. Two identical tan ships, both smaller than Boba’s, had been converging on the spot the  _ Slave IV _ used to be—one diving from above and one coming from an angle below. Now in the aftermath of the flare, the lower ship was swerving wildly.

Boba began firing at the swerving ship even as he slowed the backward movement. He tilted to the side and downward, still facing the other ships as he drew a wide curve.

And oh, _this_ was flying. Yani had been so impressed with herself when she pulled off the move Boba taught her, but now she realized how basic it had been. In a real battle, ships didn’t fly in nice straight lines and wait for you to fire at them.

Boba hit the ship he’d been aiming at with a spray of plasma bolts across its hull, and it exploded in a colorful array of sparks. But now the first ship, the one that had dived at the beginning, was on their tail, and Boba began evasive maneuvers. There were no obstacles to hide behind, so he flew in a twisting, chaotic dance to dodge the pursuing craft’s fire.

Yani clutched her lekku to her chest to keep them from flopping around at all the sudden directional changes. She worried that she was getting in the way of Boba’s view and reach of the controls, but so far, he was still piloting at a level she could barely conceive of. His reactions were so fast they were instinctual. This was more than a talent for flying; it was an intentionally, rigorously rehearsed skill.

Boba finally slipped far enough away from the other ship that he could spend a second abruptly turning 180 degrees to face the pursuer head-on. He waited a moment, two, and then fired a larger plasma blast that obliterated the approaching ship. Pieces of it exploded in all directions, and a couple of them hit the  _ Slave IV _ with dull thunks.

Boba didn’t release the joystick. “They were in a formation.” He sounded confused. Then he cursed and began flying again. “There’s a third ship. Where is it?”

“There! That star just flickered.” Yani didn’t stop to think, just pointed at the anomaly caught in the corner of her eye, and Boba didn’t question her.

He flew toward the visual disturbance. He diverted all shield power to the front of the craft, concentrating the shields until they were visible as faint blue outlines. Then he slowed to a halt. Boba thumbed over a trigger on the joystick, contemplating. Then he opened a communication line that broadcast his voice to anyone nearby. “This is the _Slave IV_. State your identity.”

Another of the tan ships appeared as its cloaking device melted away. “Stand down!” came a woman’s voice. “This is the _Hunter’s Peril_ , and I’m Captain Shleek.”

“You’re a saboteur?” Boba asked, though Yani didn’t understand what he meant.

“Yes. A good one, I thought. Though I never would have tried to match myself against Boba Fett. Believe me, I wouldn’t have taken on this merchandise if I knew that you had his puck.”

“Who do you have with you?”

A second voice came from the _Hunter’s Peril_ , saying, “Please, no, can’t we—” but Shleek cut him off.

“Shut it. I know when I’m beaten, and I’m not dying for your skimpy ass and six hundred credits.” Shleek addressed Boba again. “The merch is called Reelo Tetsu. That’s what you’re here for, right?”

That was the name of the Rodian they were after. It seemed they’d stumbled upon him accidentally. “Yes,” Boba said.

“I’ll hand him over without a fuss if you promise to let this ship go. You already killed two of my crewmates. Good spacers.”

“They shot at me first.”

“I know. I know,” she sounded resigned. “Fair’s fair, and that’s why I’m not holding their deaths against ya. But I’ve got another crewmate aboard with me, and I’d rather not lose anyone else.”

“I don’t need to kill you if you’re surrendering. I’m going to lock onto your ship to pick up the merchandise, but if I catch so much as a glint of a blaster, you’re all dead. Got it?”

“Loud and clear.”

Boba shut off the comm line and guided his ship toward the _Hunter’s Peril_.

“You’re not hard anymore,” Yani observed. So they wouldn’t be continuing where they left off, then. A shame.

“Sorry,” Boba said.

“There’s no need to apologize for not getting turned on by blowing people up. I’d actually call that an admirable trait.”

Boba hummed in amusement, but then they were attaching to the other ship’s airlock, and there was no time to say more on the subject.

—

“What’s a saboteur?” Yani asked once the dejected Rodian was stored in the cage and they were a parsec away from the battle site.

“If you have a bounty on your head, you can pay a bounty hunting saboteur to ferry you safely from point A to point B. They work opposite us, but we’re all a lot alike: brash, in it for the credits.”

Yani had never heard of them, so maybe there were fewer saboteurs than there were hunters.

“She should’ve just stayed hidden and not sent those other two ships after me,” Boba mused. “I would’ve flown right past her. Though maybe she wasn’t confident that her radar cloaking would work against my instruments. Ships can rarely hide from me.”

Was he regretting that those two pilots had to die? Yani felt bad about it, but then again, it had sort of been self-defense. Why would people choose these lines of work if they were so dangerous?

Now that they had left the danger behind, Yani’s thoughts drifted back to the moments just preceding disaster—when Boba had put a big hand on her leg and his dick had pressed against her backside and she’d thought that it was _finally happening_. Even though she really wished that they had fucked, she was in bright spirits. At least now, she knew that Boba found her attractive, and Boba knew that she wanted him back.

The next step would be getting him worked up again, and Yani planned myriad ways to do this: brushing up against him “accidentally,” wearing provocative clothing (maybe she could steal one of his shirts and prance around in that), casually mentioning sex. If all else failed, she could loosen him up with a little alcohol; he had several kinds aboard.

Yani went to sleep with a smile on her face, head brimming with schemes.


	23. Tease

Boba was leaned against some kitchen cabinets sipping his typical mug of caf and reading  _ Galladinium’s Galactic Datalog of Fantastic Technology _ on the datapad. The Datalog was a bit garish and tacky, but it was regularly updated with the latest technological advancements, and he liked to keep on top of these things. Often he would read about a new weapon or piece of equipment and have ideas on how to implement it in his work. Or plan how to combat it if someone else picked up the tech.

He and Yani were approximately three Standard weeks into a hunt for an escaped murderer named Birlif. They had a tracking fob for him, so they could pinpoint his rough location in the galaxy, but he kept _moving_. It was a good strategy. Birlif would travel through hyperspace for a while, and when he showed up in realspace again, Boba would get a hit on him and set a course in that direction. By the time Boba arrived, however, Birlif would have moved on to the next long jump, and Boba would have to wait until he resurfaced to track him again. Eventually, they’d catch up to him, but for now it was a lot of repetitive space travel.

Three Standard weeks, by this point—fifteen days—though Boba would have to do some calculations to see if he and Yani were still following Standard day cycles. He thought that their days might have lengthened a bit naturally without the timekeeping of a sun. He would talk to Yani about it, see if she were concerned with sticking to the Standard calendar or if she didn’t mind a slightly altered circadian rhythm. Their bodies wouldn’t suffer from it. Every planet had a different local day, and most species adapted to them easily.

Boba absentmindedly considered what to do after they caught Birlif. Though he wasn’t complaining about spending lots of downtime with Yani, this mission was convincing him that Guild work just wasn’t worth the payday. He’d gone on longer, tougher missions before, but they’d had rewards of credits in the thousands, not hundreds. Boba was burning a lot of fuel making all these jumps, and he knew he wasn’t going to recuperate the cost.

Karga just kept giving him the least-profitable, most annoying jobs. If the intent was to discourage him from staying with the Guild, it was working.

So, what next, if not more Guild work? He hadn’t been to Tatooine to check up on things in Jabba’s Palace in a while. Bib Fortuna’s Palace, now. He could do bodyguard work on a nice Core world; highborn pretentious types would jump at the chance to hire him for obscene amounts of credits, more as a status symbol than an actual guard. He’d done that once or twice—followed nobles around gritting his teeth at their prattle and wondering if tossing oneself into a Mustafarian volcano really was as painful as people said. Or he and Yani could just planet-hop, wasting fuel, but this time to destinations they chose and wanted to visit.

“Good morning,” Yani said, startling Boba out of his introspection, and he nearly choked on his sip of caf when he saw her. She was wearing one of his shirts, a black knit that brushed her thighs and whose sleeves half-covered her hands. She was wearing _his shirt_. She didn’t seem at all self-conscious or concerned with how he’d react, just went about the kitchen as if everything were completely normal and she weren’t sending him into cardiac arrest.

Boba swallowed. God of the Stranded Spacers, her thighs were completely bare. So were her feet as she padded around sleepily, and did she have anything on  _ under _ the shirt?

She noticed him staring. (How could she not? He couldn’t tear his eyes from the blue expanse of her legs.) “Is it okay that I borrowed this to sleep in? It’s really soft.”

“Perfectly okay,” Boba managed.

“Thanks.” Yani turned to the cabinets opposite him and rooted around. “Do we have any more of those toast sticks? Oh, they’re up here.” She reached for the top shelf, standing on her tiptoes, and her raised arm lifted the hem of the shirt almost to the edge of her ass.

_ Just a little farther. _ If she’d been Boba’s—if they were in an established relationship—he would have crowded her against the wall and fucked her from behind for pulling this little stunt. He could’ve pushed the shirt up around her waist, grabbed a handful of her ass, and murmured into her neck all the filthy things he was thinking.

But Yani grabbed the box and pulled out a few sticks for heating up, and the moment passed. “I don’t need any caf this morning,” she said once she’d warmed up her breakfast. “I’m just going to go eat down in my room.” She turned to leave.

“Wait,” Boba said. “I wanted to talk to you about…” There had been something, something he was going to ask her, right?

Yani leaned against the doorframe, one hip cocked. “Loth-cat got your tongue?”

And Boba realized that she knew  _ exactly _ what she was doing to him. This little innocence routine was all an act so she could get away with being a fucking tease.

Two could play that game.

“I was going to ask you about day cycles and whether you’re fine with ours migrating closer to 25 hours. But you don’t have to answer now if you don’t want to.” Boba started exiting the kitchen and paused next to her in the doorway, loving the way her breath quickened and eyes darted around his face. He leaned in closer and fingered the hem of the shirt. “You should leave this on all day so I can look at your pretty legs whenever I want.”

“I—” It was her turn to get flustered, her turn to swallow and blush.

He dragged his fingers along her waist then left.


	24. Drunk

Boba was in the cockpit, tinkering with the wiring under the console, when Yani pranced into the room.

She stood above him expectantly, hands behind her back. “Boba,” she said. “Boba, I’m  _ so _ bored.”

Birlif had managed to stay one step ahead of them, and this search to find him was dragging on at the crawl of a sand slug. Boba didn’t blame Yani for going stir-crazy. “What can I do? Do you want to play sabacc or something? I think I have a set of cards around here somewhere.”

“Can we break out your alcohol? I’m in the mood for something a little more adult.”

Boba was instantly up for this suggestion. One hundred percent. He couldn’t wait to see where the night would go, if Yani’s loose tongue loosened even more after she got a drink in her, if she’d suggest skipping right to more  _ adult _ activities.

Boba’s liquor cabinet was divided into padded sections so the bottles wouldn’t jostle and break as he made sharp turns. To that end, they were strapped down with simple rigging, too. Yani wrinkled her nose at the sight. “I have to unsnap each bottle and pull it out to check what it is?” She leaned into the cabinet, pulled out one bottle, then put it back and snapped its rigging down before turning to Boba. “Can I just ask if you have jet juice or spicebrew?”

Boba chuckled and reached around her to pull out some jet juice, a pretty standard beverage that was vacuum-distilled. He grabbed two glasses and followed Yani to the hull. Most of the  _ Slave IV’s _ rooms were cramped, so the hull was the only spot in which they could comfortably stretch out. They sat on the floor, and Boba poured them each a portion. “What do you want to drink to?” he asked.

“I don’t ‘drink to’ things. I just drink.” Yani swallowed an impressive gulp of jet.

She just, just amazed him. She never said what he expected. Boba leaned back against the wall with one leg bent and watched her, nursing his own drink. He didn’t want to finish it too fast. He rarely let himself get drunk—he didn’t like dulled senses—but Yani was leaping right in. She wasn’t a drunk, obviously, because he’d never seen her touch alcohol. Perhaps she was nervous since they’d never done this before.

Yani reclined on one hand. “Tell me about yourself, Boba.”

_ I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve become such a different man since meeting you. _ Boba chose something safer. “Did you know that I’m a clone?”

“I didn’t. Your father…”

“I’m not his son in the traditional sense of the word. I’m a carbon copy of him.”

“That’s like the male tradition of naming sons after yourself, but ten times worse.”

Boba was stunned into silence. His being a clone was a sore point, and he’d been expecting this conversation to descend into melodrama, but Yani was giving him a hilarious new perspective instead. He grinned. “I suppose.”

“So what, was he not into women? Not into anyone? I wonder if that’s Kuat’s problem, too: he hasn’t passed on his noble lineage yet because the idea of fucking a woman disgusts him. You could give him some cloning tips.”

Boba laughed long and jovially, secretly wondering if she’d stumbled upon some truth. “I could slip him a pamphlet on artificial insemination, just to see the look on his face.”

The conversation bounced around from topic to topic, mostly guided and maintained by Yani. Boba was content to listen to her ramble. Her train of thought, as she finished one glass, then two, flared at the speed of a shooting star. No, it was like making many microjumps through hyperspace one after another.

“The thing about pet names,” she said, definitely tipsy by this point, “is that there are no good ones. All of them come with connotations and implications and stuff. ‘Sweetie?’ Condescending. ‘Love?’ Are you using it in a casual way, or are you declaring something? ‘Darling?’ That can be romantic, suave. But if the wrong dude says it, suddenly it’s creepy, and if the guy says it before you know whether he’s the creepy kind or not,” she blew a puff of breath, “suddenly it ruins the word.”

Boba had called her ‘sweetheart.’ How did she feel about that one?

Yani reached for the bottle of jet juice to refill her glass.

“Are you sure you haven’t had enough?” Boba asked. She was small, and jet was strong.

She glared at him. “Here I am trying to have a good time, and you want to police my drinking like you’re paying for the alcohol.” She looked down at the bottle in her hand then back at him, smug. “Oh. I guess you are.” She took a drink directly from the bottle.

He could let her have this. There was precious little else to do aboard unless she wanted to do _him_ , which he would be more than happy with. Every moment around her made him more sure that he wanted her near for the rest of his life. The future had always been hazy to Boba, but now when he looked forward, he could see with the clarity of a star in the black that he’d do whatever it took to keep Yani in it.

“So,” she said with a mischievous look his way, “what nicknames are you into?”

“Is there anything I can say that you won’t judge?”

“Nope!”

“Then, I have never wanted a nickname in my life.” It was sort of true. He hadn’t considered it, ever.

“Oh, that’s no fun, either.” She took another drink. “In that case, I’ll just have to try some out and see which ones do it for you. How about ‘baby?’ Like, hey, baby, want to grab some dinner?” She wiggled her shoulders as she said it and attempted a smolder, but it dissolved into a laugh.

“I don’t think so,” Boba said. He hoped she wouldn’t stop. This was so entertaining.

“Let me try another.” She reset her expression, then whipped back to face him. “Hey there, handsome. Are you just as good looking under the rest of that armor?”

Boba wasn’t currently wearing the armor, but the joke still landed. Boba didn’t know how to feel about this strange, strange situation. He rested his elbow on the propped-up leg and put his chin on his fist, staring at Yani with adoration. “Keep these coming.”

“You’ve got it, honey.” More drinking, presumably as she came up with ideas. “What about something a little kinky? What if a girl was looking all cute for you—batting her eyes and pouting her lips—and she said,” Yani imitated this by swinging her lekku over one shoulder and peering up at him through her lashes, “‘Please fuck me, sir.’”

He didn’t know if it was the words themselves or the coquettish delivery of them, but Boba was suddenly finding it difficult to form coherent thoughts. Coherent sentences were an impossibility, so he didn’t try to speak. She dropped the flirty posture, and Boba was reminded that it was an act, a joke; she hadn’t  _ really _ just said that to him. He needed to calm down and stop picturing dragging her over and pinning her to the ground.

Yani giggled. Then narrowed her eyes at him as she took another gulp from the bottle. Her speech was beginning to reveal that she was drunk. “I bet you, I bet you secretly like being called ‘Daddy.’ And you try to hide it because it’s perverse and gross, but deep down in your heart, you have to live with the fact that that’s just the kind of person you are.”

She didn’t give him time to formulate a reply, not that he would have been able to find one.

“Boba Fett likes when girls call him ‘Daddy’ in bed. Boba Fett is into all of it: spanking when they’re bad, infantilizing them, spoiling them. Boba says, ‘Come over here and sit on my lap, princess,’ because he’s a terrible person. That’s what he means when he says he’s a bad guy.”

Boba wasn’t offended, he was astonished and amused.  _ How _ did she come up with this stuff?

She held up a warning hand to him. “And don’t even think about saying it. I’m half-convinced that you’d convert me if you said those words in your hot, gritty voice, and I’d really rather not have to add that to my list of kinks.”

“What words?”

She mimicked him by pitching her voice low and puffing out her chest. “Sit in my lap, princess.”

Well, that was a challenge, and he  _ had _ to try, to see what effect would come over Yani. He didn’t know if his voice was anything sexy like she said, but maybe she found it so, and that was thrilling. “Why don’t you get over here and sit in my lap, princess?”

Her reaction was immediate. She had the bottle’s lip pressed to her mouth, and now it dropped, forgotten, as she turned to him with blown pupils and a dazed expression. Her eyes didn’t leave his as she obeyed, crawling the few feet to him and straddling his thigh.

Oh, this was heady, and Boba didn’t care what words he said in what language as long as they made Yani look at him like _that_. Boba took the drooping bottle from her and set it aside. Then he rested one hand on her waist, lifted the other to brush her lekku.

Yani _whimpered_.

“Yeah?” He paused. “Does this feel good?”

She nodded, all bravado vanished. Her hand spread on his chest, fingers curling a little into the fabric of his shirt. Her eyes shut when he stroked gently down one lek.

Boba spoke in a low intone. “I love the way you look, your exotic beauty. Your skin, gods, is like a bright sweet in a shop, and I want to taste it all over.” He squeezed her waist. “I thought all Twi’leks were tall and lean, but your curves are beyond belief. I bet you would feel so good pressed up against me. And you’re brilliant. Witty. You challenge me intellectually, and you challenge me to be a better person.” This last was soft as he leaned in.

Yani bared her neck to the nudge of his face.

He wanted so badly to kiss her throat, but he held off, knowing that once he started he wouldn’t stop until she was naked and full of his cum. But she was _drunk_. He couldn’t fuck her when she was too drunk to give consent.

He couldn’t, he couldn’t be a good person when it meant having to turn down things like this. He should’ve been drinking all this time. If they both had been drunk, he could have excused it.

Boba was painfully hard. And she was right there, swaying, waiting for him to touch her. He knew with certainty that at this moment, she’d do anything he asked. If he opened his pants and guided her head down, she’d suck him off. If he told her to strip, lay back, and spread her legs, she would comply without a word. He could fuck her tonight, after all these weeks of waiting and wondering what it would be like and longing for her so desperately that the galaxy seemed to have rearranged with her at the center. Boba  _ wanted _ Yani with a deep-seated ache.

_ Not like this. _

He would get another chance, he told himself. He had to believe that.

Boba helped Yani to a standing position. “I think you should get to bed.” And just as he’d intuited, she followed his suggestion without protest, letting him lead her through the ship. “Think you can manage the ladder?”

“Yeah.”

He descended first to catch her in case she fell, but she took the rungs slowly and climbed down without issue. Boba brought her a glass of water and a package of crackers in case she wanted something else in her stomach besides booze, then he retreated to his cot.

He didn’t last thirty seconds fucking his hand.


	25. Calm Before the Storm

Yani groaned. Her head pounded, a result of consuming too much alcohol the night before. She groaned again when she remembered everything she’d said to Boba in her addled state.

Her plan had been to loosen him up with a drink, but then she’d gotten so nervous that she was the one who needed liquid courage. And she’d tried to flirt several times, but Boba just sat there and reacted, didn’t flirt back or initiate contact, and so she’d just kept drinking to cover her nerves.

Now she needed to do damage control. Who knew what he was thinking of her now—if he saw her as pathetic for getting drunk and throwing herself at him, if he was resenting her for being a tease? But he hadn’t taken advantage and slept with her, and that fact lifted her heart. Despite his insistence to the contrary and the stories she’d heard about his past, Boba was a good man.

“I’m sorry for last night,” she told Boba once she’d worked up the courage to climb to the upper decks. “Thank you for putting me to bed.” And he’d given her a snack and a cup of water, taking care of her despite her unprofessionalism, and she felt so enamored with him for the kindness.

“No need for apology,” Boba said. “You’re a cute drunk.”

Yani smiled. He wasn’t mad at her. “What’s the plan for today?”

“Come look at this chart.” He showed her a holoprojected map of the galaxy marked with dots and connecting lines in a chaotic tangle. “I’ve charted the path our friend has taken trying to pick up on any patterns.”

If they could hurry up and finish this chase, that would suit Yani just fine. “Found anything?”

“He’s done a decent job of keeping his movements random, but I think I’ve spotted a few trends. The first is that he likes to touch down on a planet with decent cities and high concentrations of humans after a long hyperspace jump, presumably to stretch his legs and get some warm food like most spacers. The second is that he doesn’t repeat stops, and he doesn’t like to move backward; he’ll jump in a new direction, but never one close to his last destination.”

“Can we predict where he’ll go next?”

“Perhaps. We can make educated guesses at least. The question is: do we try to beat him to a location? If we guess right, we can pick him up as he arrives. But if we’re wrong, we’ll fall even farther behind in our chase.”

She studied the map. She didn’t know if this mattered, but they had a lot of data points to work from because they’d been following Birlif for so long. If they could extrapolate to predict his next move, they could finally conclude this chase. “I say we take a risk and try to guess where he’s going.”

“All right. I’m going to keep studying this chart. Could you pull up the interactive map on the datapad and make me a list of every planet with at least one spaceport and at least a fifty percent concentration of humans?”

He was giving her something to do, something that would usefully aid him in the search. “You’ve got it,” she said, straightening her shoulders.

—

They caught Birlif as he touched down on Onderon in the capital city of Iziz. Yani couldn’t help feeling proud as Boba returned to the ship with a prisoner in binders. She had helped, in a small way, to catch a murderer. A thrill rippled through her, perhaps a tiny reflection of what Boba felt when he hauled people in, and she understood how creatures could get addicted to this feeling.

The jump back to Nevarro didn’t feel long at all now that their chase had finally come to a close. Boba let Yani visit the market on her own to buy some fresh foods while he turned in the quarry. She had a comlink and a button she could press that would instantly alert Boba if she were in danger, so shopping alone didn’t worry her. She picked up a skirt too, a long, loose piece in a soft gray that she fell in love with at first glance.

Boba noticed her wearing it when he came back from visiting Greef Karga. “That’s pretty. Is it new?”

She twirled, and the skirt fanned around her. “Yes. Is it okay that I bought it?”

“Certainly.”

Yani rushed to show him another of her purchases. “And I got fruit, too! Fresh fruit, not dried or frozen or anything.” She grabbed one of the yellow spheres and put it in his hand. “I don’t know what this is called, but I tried one and it was juicy and delicious.”

Boba took off the helmet one-handed and set it aside, then bit into the fruit. He smiled at the ground. “It’s good.”

Yani started to move around him, but Boba stopped her with a hand on the arm.

“Yani.” His hand slid down to lace his fingers with hers. They stood shoulder to shoulder but facing in opposite directions. The leather of his gloves made his hand even bigger, cradling hers like safety incarnate. “Stay with me. I didn’t get another puck, so we can do whatever you want. Go wherever you want. I don’t care what happens next as long as you’re at my side.”

She thought her heart would burst out of her chest from how fast it was pounding. Boba was saying that he wanted her around, he wanted her _with him_ , and he’d do whatever it took to make that happen. “Yes,” she breathed. “I’ll stay.” How could she do otherwise when Boba was trying so hard to be better for her, was strong and quiet and safe, had rescued her from slavery and given her a home and taught her that not all men were the same?

A beeping sound from the cockpit interrupted them.

“Someone is contacting us,” Boba said. He released Yani’s hand and climbed into the cockpit with Yani at his heels. He bent over the console, examined a message there, and announced, “It’s a recorded dispatch from Kuat Drive Yards.”

Kuat of Kuat was back. Yani met Boba’s eyes and saw dread in their depths.

“I’m going to play it,” he said. “I want you to stay and listen. I’m not keeping any secrets from you anymore regarding him, okay?”

“Okay.” _Don’t play it_ , she wanted to scream as apprehension circled like ice through her veins.

Boba hit the button. An image of a tall, regal figure popped up on the dash.

“That’s Kuat?” Yani asked, leaning closer for a better look. “He’s cute. I officially forgive you for sleeping with him.”

Boba nudged her shoulder with his affectionately. “Don’t get any ideas. He’s pretty the way a viper is.”

“Greetings, old friend,” the holo-image of Kuat said. “I have come to see the error of my ways in my desire to separate you from your new lover. I should celebrate any twist of fate that brings you happiness, not seek to eradicate it.”

She wasn’t his lover, technically, yet. But Kuat wouldn’t know that.

“In celebration of this newfound realization, I invite you to my home so that I may apologize in person. Come as soon as you are able. I long to see you both.”

The hologram disappeared, and Boba cursed in the ensuing silence.

“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Yani asked.

“He could be.” Boba didn’t sound hopeful. “I don’t see how we can refuse this offer.”

“Of course we can,” Yani pleaded. “Just say you’re busy but you accept his apology from afar.” They couldn’t risk it, not when everything was going so well.

“We don’t want to give him a reason to change his mind.”

And so Yani watched, helpless, as Boba responded to accept Kuat’s invitation, as her feelings of contentment began unraveling at the edges like she was stepping into the range of a black hole.


	26. Twi'leks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has trigger warnings for violence against women and racism (speciesism). This is a critique of the Star Wars universe, but of course, the Star Wars universe reflects our own.

Boba scanned Kuat of Kuat’s pharaonic audience chamber for anomalies as he and Yani entered. The door shut behind them, leaving them alone with Kuat.

Kuat’s throne was facing them. His felinx rested against his shoulder, and Kuat scratched the fur at the base of its scalp. “Welcome to you both,” he said. He lifted and set the felinx on the ground, where it wound around his legs begging for more attention. “Away with you, girl,” he said, his voice fond. “I have guests to attend to.”

The felinx leapt onto the throne when Kuat approached Boba and Yani, curling up and purring.

“You wanted to speak to us in person?” Boba asked, hoping to end this interaction as quickly as possible and ferry Yani back to safety. He just wanted to escape with Yani somewhere remote and lavish attention on her.

She was silent at his side in a short-sleeved tunic and pants, her neutral expression a hairsbreadth from being a frown. She so obviously didn’t wish to be here, but she’d come along anyway for him. For them, to appease Kuat so they could run off together in peace.

“I haven’t yet met lovely Yani,” Kuat said. He took her hand and gallantly kissed it. “You are even more enchanting in person,” he purred. “I see why Boba was so taken with you.”

She tugged her hand back. “Thank you.”

“Come! Sit and chat with me. Can I offer you any refreshments?” Kuat led them to the couch, where he gestured for Yani to take a seat and then lounged beside her.

Boba remained standing, though there was another chair, and crossed his arms. “We won’t be staying long.”

“What a shame. I’m sure we have so much to discuss: old history between Boba and me, new history between him and you.” He spoke to Yani. “Let’s swap anecdotes about our bounty hunter in Mandalorian armor.”

There was no way this would go well for Boba, even if Kuat kept the mood light. Gods, if Kuat and Yani bonded over making fun of him, there was nowhere Boba could hide to escape the embarrassment.

“You don’t harbor any grudge against me?” Yani asked skeptically.

“Boba has made his choice. He’s made lots of choices, and he deserves to reap the rewards.” Kuat smiled at her. “So tell me, how did you two meet?”

“He rescued me on one of his missions.” Yani met Boba’s gaze through the helmet. “I needed safe passage off the planet, and he gave it to me.”

“How sweet. But so unlike him; you must be very special. I’m reminded of another time… Let’s see, I could just show you. I have a recording of the incident.” Kuat tapped buttons on his holoprojector. “I like to keep watch on important places in the galaxy, and I have many scattered little droids collecting videos for me.”

Boba narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like this. What memory could Kuat possibly share, and what was the reasoning behind it?

“Here we are,” Kuat said, and a giant holoimage exploded to fill the room. It pictured creatures of all species milling about in a tightly-packed space: musicians and thugs and gunrunners. At the sudden appearance, Kuat’s felinx hissed in fright.

Boba recognized the place, and more importantly, he recognized the time. He uncrossed his arms with sudden horror. “How dare you,” he said quietly to Kuat, whose smirk revealed that he knew exactly what Yani would think of this particular moment in Boba’s history. Boba’d had his problems with Kuat in the past, but this crossed a line. Making Yani watch this was evil. “Yani, we’re leaving. Now.”

Yani had stood in shock when the holoprojection expanded to fill the room. Likely, she was used to them being small or of one lifesized person, not many. “What is this?” She spun around, trying to take in every figure. A glowing creature walked through Boba, its image flickering, but Yani stepped aside for it, moving away from Boba and Kuat toward the room’s center. Then she saw the projection’s most prominent figure lording over the proceedings. “Is that Jabba the Hutt?”

“Yani,” Boba coaxed. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“This,” Kuat answered Yani, “is one of the pivotal moments in the galaxy’s history. Or at least, it precedes one. Some might call this before point inconsequential, but I think it would be of interest to you.”

A Twi’lek woman dressed in an outfit that couldn’t possibly hide any undergarments beneath it began to dance in the center of the room. Her name had been Oola, if Boba remembered correctly. A chain on her neck connected her to Jabba.

Yani breathed heavily and stared at the other woman. “Why are you showing this to me? I get it. Twi’leks are slaves. You don’t have to remind me.”

“Because there is another important guest in attendance: our mutual friend. Make no mistake about who the most powerful person in the room is.”

Yani spun and searched through the gritty crowd until she spotted him: Boba from six years ago, standing stoic amongst the chaos, observing.

Oola’s plight called Yani’s attention back. Jabba was tugging on her chain, dragging her closer, and they didn’t need sound to know that she was begging as she fought. The terror on her face compounded as she struggled to get away until Jabba dragged her over a trap door and sent her falling into the rancor pit.

“She died?” Yani asked.

“Eaten alive as entertainment for her master,” Kuat said.

Yani faced the holoprojection of Boba again, tears in her eyes. “You just stood there and watched.”

“Yani,” Boba said forcefully. “Look at me.”

“ _I am!_ ”

Because that _was_ Boba. These were true events. And at that time, Boba could never have predicted that he’d develop feelings for a Twi’lek girl, that he would come to regret this moment of indifference toward another.

What did Kuat think was going to happen now? If he made Yani upset enough, drove a wedge between her and Boba, did Kuat think Boba would come running back to him? Never, never after causing Yani such anguish, after forcing her to watch the gruesome death of one of her kind. The recording looped, and Oola began to dance again.

“There is one more figure of note,” Kuat said, and Boba whipped to face him.

Now what? What could possibly be worse?

“A dancing girl hailing from my own planet.”

_ No. _ In an instant, Boba had a blaster pointed at Kuat. “One more word and I put a burning hole through your skull.”

“Why?” Yani asked bitterly. “What is he going to tell me? I want to hear.”

“Can you trust me when I say that you don’t? It’s in the past, Yani. Please, let’s just leave.”

Her fists clenched as she faced Boba. “Let him speak.”

Kuat was grinning, grinning because he’d won. He was going to tell this story in the worst possible way—not that there was any good way to tell it. He stepped away from Boba’s blaster and pointed out a woman in slave’s garb with short-cropped hair, hanging at the side of the room and watching Oola’s death with disgust. “This,” Kuat said, “is Kateel of the noble Kuati house Kuhlvult. Or as she’s now known: Neelah. Out of jealousy and spite, her sister hired Boba Fett to murder her. _I think_ he developed a little crush. He always did like them highborn and feisty.”

If Yani recognized the statement as a jab at her humble origins, she didn’t react.

“But for whatever reason, Boba didn’t take her out as instructed. He wiped her memory and dropped her in Jabba’s Palace as a slave girl.”

Bringing up Kateel was a blow below the belt, intending and succeeding to remind Yani that before she knew Boba, he’d been a vile person. Kateel was a living memento of his terrible past; all the others were dead.

Boba sheathed the blaster and reached a pacifying hand to Yani, whose expression now wavered between shock and rage. “Please listen. I came to an arrangement with Jabba and made him promise that she wouldn’t be killed.”

Kuat couldn’t keep the glee out of his voice. “But beyond death, you didn’t care what happened to her. Beatings. Rape. Being forced to perform in front of the slug. You stopped by every once in a while to make sure she still breathed at least, then went on your way.”

“It’s better than being dead,” said Boba.

“Is it?” Yani seethed. “You would know? Did you give her a choice, Boba, or did you just decide for her?”

Boba wished he could claim some greater motivation for leaving her with Jabba, but it had been convenience, a place he knew he’d return to regularly, so he wouldn’t have to go out of his way to check up on her.

“Is she still there?”

“Yani—”

“ _Is she still there?_ ”

There was nothing Boba could say but the truth. There was no defense he could make. He was watching Yani slip away in front of him, and it was entirely his fault—not Kuat’s, Boba’s. He’d made his own choices and was reaping the rewards. “As far as I know, yes. I saw her about six months ago.”

Yani closed her eyes, trembling. “She’s going to die. You know that, right? When she’s not pretty anymore, there won’t be any use for her.”

Kuat spoke up, his voice so casual in comparison to Yani’s heartbreak. “I wouldn’t mourn, not like I do for dear Oola. Her death was unnecessary, and I weep at the loss of objective beauty from the galaxy. But Kateel was a bitch, and I probably would’ve had to marry her. You did me a favor, Boba, by putting her in her place. I’ll marry her sister now.”

Boba swallowed bile as he looked at Kuat. He’d once been _attracted_ to this man.

Yani backed into a corner, her eyes on the ground, and she hugged herself. “You never asked me about my time as a slave. I thought you were being considerate, but you actually just _don’t care_.”

Boba stepped toward her, trying to offer some comfort, but she bared her fangs at him and hissed like the felinx had—an expression of panic and anger. Boba froze. Yani had never reacted to him like that before.

“How was I so wrong about you?” Tears overflowed as she looked at him. “How did I miss the signs? You don’t care about slaves; you don’t care about Twi’leks.”

“I care about you,” Boba insisted with all the passion he could muster. “Only you, out of every being in this gods-forsaken galaxy.”

Yani shook her head. “If you don’t care about slaves, you don’t care about me.”

“What do you want me to do, free every Twi’lek woman in the galaxy?” The universe was a shit place for everyone. Most people didn’t get saved; that was the brutal truth. When Boba had been orphaned and abandoned on Geonosis, no one had ever saved him.

No, _Yani_ had. Yani had saved him with her pure heart and witty quips and the way she forced him to confront the dirty parts of himself he’d rather not see. And now he was losing her.

And the accusations just kept coming. “You called me ‘exotic,’” she said with realization. “That’s how you see me, isn’t it? All of your porn is of human men fucking alien women. Well,” her nose scrunched like she smelled rotten fruit, “I suppose I can’t blame you for that. It’s what most porn is. That or ‘big ugly alien fucks a human woman.’”

The blood drained from Boba’s face. He had many faults, and he knew most of them, but this was subtle, insidious. How could he fix these unconscious biases in time to win her back? How could he prove himself?

Yani still clutched her shoulders. She glanced at the ceiling like she was holding back more tears, and then she took in Boba and Kuat again with equal loathing, glaring at them like they were the same. “I hate men. I hate human men. You looked at Twi’leks and saw more girls for you to fuck, but these came in _pretty colors_. We look a little bit different from you, and our expressions and mannerisms are just a tiny bit hard for you to read, and that was all the opening you needed to completely disregard our personhood. And so you reduced an _entire species_ to sex objects. No, not an entire species, _just the women_. Bib Fortuna is on a throne just as fat and greasy as the rest of you.”

Boba exchanged a glance with Kuat, who was at least looking a little ashamed.

“I want to go home,” Yani said, in the smallest voice Boba had ever heard.

His already broken heart fractured into smaller pieces. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go back to the ship.”

“No. I want to go anywhere you’re not.”

Boba’s world ended. “Please, Yani.” His voice broke. “Don’t do this.”

“I’ll call a ship for you, darling—” Kuat began, but Yani cut him off.

“Do you think I’m stupid? I know I wouldn’t survive that flight. Boba will take me away from here, and then he’ll put me on a planet and never come back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don’t be mad at Yani, guys. She’s been through a lot of trauma and hasn’t taken the time to process it, and then she was _intentionally_ triggered. Her reaction is understandable.


	27. Injury

Yani followed Boba out of Kuat’s audience chamber, her world so different from when she’d walked in. Boba was just like every other man in his view of Twi’leks, and he’d put a girl into slavery. How had she let herself trust him? Kriffing stars, she thought she’d been  _ falling in love _ with him.

But he’d rescued her, and fed and clothed and housed her—had he wanted a personal Twi’lek fucktoy?

Except he hadn’t had sex with her yet, even when she’d drunkenly thrown herself at him. Oh, she didn’t know how to reconcile all these sides of Boba. The image of him standing in Jabba’s palace, casually watching a girl be murdered for sport, was seared into her brain.

They stepped into the hallway, and Yani caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye. “Watch out!” she shouted, and she pushed Boba out of range of the knife aiming for his unarmored side. The blade caught her upper arm, and she screamed in pain and fright.

The hallway erupted into chaos. Kuat’s guards stormed in, disarming and trapping the assailant: a young Kuati man in green coveralls. He looked shocked that he’d missed, and he hardly resisted as they cuffed his arms behind his back. Kuat was seething and snarling, turning from the man to Boba to his guards and demanding answers.

Boba had eyes only for her. He slapped a hand over the wound to put pressure on it, and he was talking to her, saying her name, but her mouth wouldn’t move to reply. “This needs medical attention,” Boba said to Kuat. “I’m taking her back to the ship. I don’t trust any of your people.”

“You, escort them,” Kuat told a guard who was dressed better than the others, some kind of captain, maybe. Then he told Boba, “I will take care of this scum who attacked you.”

And Boba picked Yani up without another word, just scooped her into his arms, and nearly ran down the hallway. “Keep pressure on that arm, Yani.”

She clutched the wound. Magenta blood wet her fingers, but the pain was hazy, her thoughts thick and slow. Was she in shock?

Boba set her on the ground just inside the ship’s door, in the corner formed by the wall and the cage. He shut the door then grabbed a medkit hanging on the wall. “Idiot girl,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Why would you take a knife for me?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Boba slid to his knees at her side, yanking supplies out of the kit. “Remove your hand.” He pulled off his gloves and quickly wiped his hands down with a swab, then ran another over her wound to wipe away the blood. He pointed some kind of scanner from the kit at her arm, saying “Twi’lek” at it, then sighed in relief. “The cut missed your major arteries, but I need to sew it up. Is that okay?”

She didn’t care. “Go ahead.”

Apparently, Boba knew how to sew wounds. Of course he did. He dove right in without hesitation, expertly manipulating suture thread with a needle and another tool for grabbing. He laid a neat row of individual stitches down the cut, glancing at her often to check her reaction.

“You should leave these in for two weeks, maybe less if you apply bacta regularly,” Boba said, breaking the silence.

But she wouldn’t stick around that long. By then, she would be on her own. Yani started to cry.

“Hey, there.” Boba ran his thumb over the skin below the cut. “I need to place one more. Do you think you can hold still for me just a little longer? You’ve been so good.”

Yani choked back her sobs, breathing in and out until the tears still flowed but she was no longer shaking.

“That’s it. I’m almost done, I swear.” He moved quickly through the last stitch, clipped the ends of the thread, and spread bacta gel across the wound. He wrapped a bandage over the stitches and taped it off. Then, hesitating, he rested a hand on her shin. “I’m so sorry.”

She stiffened. She’d let him touch her to sew up her arm, but she wouldn’t tolerate further unnecessary contact.

Boba snatched his hand away. “I’ll, I’ll bring us into space, just to get away from here. You don’t have to decide yet where you’re going.”

At least he didn’t expect this incident to change anything. Sure, she’d shoved him away from an attacker, but it had been instinctual, not because she  _ wanted _ to sacrifice herself for him. She hated him. She hated how he’d made her feel, and she was still going to leave.

Boba disappeared, and the  _ Slave IV _ lifted away. Yani was used to its rotation and easily slid down the ground toward the new floor, resuming her position with her back against the wall. His stupid ship with its stupid design.

Boba returned with a glass of water for her.

She drank, and the cool liquid was a balm for her tightened throat. She was so emotionally overwrought from the events of the last few hours. She had known who Boba was, she had heard the stories about him, but when Kuat had shown her the evidence, it was like hearing it for the first time. All the pain and trauma of her life seemed to well up at once in the face of realizing just how much she’d misjudged him.

Yani kicked at the cage bars. “I’ve been living in a ship called ‘Slave,’ and I didn’t see anything wrong with that.” Her lip wobbled as she held back more tears. “I felt safe with you. And then I learned that all this time, I’d been stupid to. How can I ever feel safe around you again?”

“Yani, I’m so, so sorry.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t, I can’t handle any more right now. Could you please just leave?”

Boba climbed out of the hull, obeying her wishes. From deep in the ship, she thought she caught the sound of gentle sobbing.


	28. Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise these two are going to get together in the end, so just bear with me through the angsty bits!

Yani slept fitfully, trying to keep pressure off her arm. Every time she shifted and bumped the wound in her sleep, she woke to pain and remembered all over again the scene in Kuat’s chamber.

She took the time to wrap her lekku in crisscrossing ribbons in the morning, a moment of vanity that she usually forewent, because she was a Twi’lek and not scared to draw attention to the fact.

Boba was already up, and seeing him unarmored in the tiny kitchen was so familiar that she nearly burst into tears again. But she held them back, held onto her resolve to take care of herself first before worrying about Boba’s hurt feelings.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked, searching her face.

“Just some caf.” She didn’t think she could eat.

Boba fixed her a cup in silence. His hands lingered as he passed it over. “I’m sorry for never asking about what you went through. Would you tell me?”

Yani took the cup and slid down the wall. She hadn’t talked about it since leaving with Boba, and letting out the story might do her some good. “I was born to a slave woman, and always knew what I was intended for, but I was allowed a lot of freedom during my childhood. I went to school from age ten to fifteen, and then they decided I was old enough to start working and brought me to live in a compound with other girls.”

Boba sat a good six feet away, arms on his pulled-up legs. “Is your mother still alive?”

“No. She got too old and wasn’t bringing in money anymore. Too expensive to keep her fed.” A friend had brought her the news. Yani had been sold to a different owner by that point. “So I started off with modeling jobs, porn, that sort of thing. One poster of me got really popular; I was naked, but posed to cover up the necessary parts. I still see it occasionally in bars and things. I was sixteen in it.”

Boba cursed under his breath and looked at the ground.

Yani sighed. “And then it was years of brothels and hotels and spice dens, passed around to different owners. I just had to lay around half-naked and look pretty most of the time. I know a lot of people who had it worse. Though near the end, the guy who owned that spice den started paying me specific attention, and I knew I had to get out of there. That’s about it.”

“I’m going to kill everyone who ever touched you,” Boba vowed.

That might have comforted her once, but now it just reminded her that Boba was a killer. “I wanted so badly to believe that you were good,” Yani said.

He leaned toward her. “I can be. I will be. I’ve already changed so much, and Yani, I’d do anything for you.”

“You would act like a good person for me. Not for yourself. Don’t you see how much pressure that puts on me? I’d have a moral obligation to never break up with you in case you turned back to assassination and kidnapping. And, and you made me feel small, Boba. Hearing about how you’d put a girl into slavery made me feel small and terrible, and I never want to feel like that again.”

To his credit, he didn’t plead or argue with her. But his voice was hollow when he spoke. “So where can I take you? What do you want to do now?”

What skills did Yani have besides selling her body? “I liked flying,” she said.

“How about Corellia? It’s a hub of space activity, and they always need pilots to fly shuttles and freighters.”

“I don’t know if I’m good enough to do it as a job, though. I had all of two lessons.”

“You are,” Boba said. “You’ll need a bit of training in whatever specific craft they give you, but you have good instincts.”

Yani sipped her caf and tried to limit her worrying. If she thought herself into a hole, she might just stay with Boba out of a fear of change. “Corellia then.”

—

She had all her belongings packed before they even touched down on the planet’s surface. Everything fit in one rucksack over her shoulder. She studied a map of Coronet City and saw that there was a job center within walking distance of the port. She would go there first, she decided, and maybe stay at an inn for as long as her job search took.

“Can I come with you and help you get settled in?” Boba asked. He stood awkwardly beside her in the hull. “I hate to drop you here and run.”

She winced. “I’d rather not have to explain Boba Fett’s presence, to be honest. That’s a lot of difficult questions to answer from the beginning.”

“Right. Let me at least give you this.” He handed her a pouch of credits, and when she peeked inside, she saw that all the chips were high denominations. He didn’t let her protest. “And a comlink. I know, I know you don’t want to hear from me again, and this isn’t meant to imply that I expect a return to familiarity. I just need to know that you can contact me in case you’re ever in trouble.”

She pocketed the comlink and tied the pouch to her belt. “Thank you.” This parting gift was more than generous. “Take care, Boba.” She would miss Boba. She would remember her time with him fondly. But she couldn’t process her feelings when the desire to kiss him struck every time she saw his face; she was too hurt to heal with him nearby. It was time to start a new life on her own.

“Take care,” he said.


	29. Coping Poorly

Boba finished his second hull stripper and gestured for a refill. He had officially reached the low point of the Weequay bartender giving him concerned looks. “Want to talk about it, buddy?” the Weequay asked as he handed Boba back his glass.

“No.” Boba took a long swig.

There was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do now that Yani was gone. She had upended his life, made him regret pretty much every choice he’d made since his father died, and then left him alone to reassemble himself from fractured pieces. He couldn’t go back to working for crime syndicates or the Empire without that serpent of guilt choking him, and he’d ruined his chances to ever be accepted in the Guild. But violence was all he knew. He had nothing.

He felt himself growing sluggish as the alcohol vanished, his thoughts thickening like fog. Boba Fett didn’t normally drink enough to numb his senses, but Boba Fett of legend was dead. He could do whatever the fuck he wanted now.

Did she know how badly she’d ruined him? No, that wasn’t fair. Boba had ruined himself. She was a freeze that expanded water in cracks until the structure shattered, but Boba had been cracked long before he met her.

He just couldn’t accept that she was gone. He’d found one precious, beautiful thing, and he’d driven her away. Her absence was like walking through a den of enemies without his armor; something was missing, something was _wrong_.

When Boba was thoroughly drunk, he paid his tab and stumbled out of the bar. A few dark shapes eyed him up and down, calculating the chances of him having credits on him (high) and of being an easy mark. Boba touched his blaster and scowled at them to make it clear he wouldn’t be, and they went back to their conversation. It helped that he was wearing the armor, excepting the helmet since he’d gone out to drink.

He wandered through dark streets without a goal in mind then found himself, somehow, at a brothel. Fine. He had no self-respect left, anyway.

He requested a blue Twi’lek girl, noticed matter-of-factly that she wore a thin shock collar. She was a slave, then. He stared at it as she led him into a closet-sized room, as she worked open his pants, and as she pulled him down onto the cot.

She moaned exaggerated encouragement as he fucked her. Her voice was too different from Yani’s. Even after he told her not to make any sounds, after he flipped her over so he didn’t have to see her face, she so  _ obviously _ wasn’t Yani—how had he ever thought this could substitute?

He was having trouble focusing. Pathetic. Just what he needed on top of it all was a circulating rumor that Boba Fett couldn’t keep it up. He was just drunk. It had to be because he was drunk and unused to the state.

The fourth time he slipped out of the woman, she reached behind her. “Let me—”

“No.” Boba tucked his soft dick back into his pants. He left her in the room and went to the front desk. “How much for that girl?”

“For another hour?” asked the pimp, reclining in his chair.

“No, I want to take her with me. How much to buy her?”

The pimp took in Boba’s drunkenness with raised eyebrows. “That’s an unusual request. 1,500 credits.”

Boba didn’t argue, just forked over the money.

The pimp dragged the Twi’lek out, and when she caught sight of Boba, she began to struggle, clawing at his arm. “No! No, please!” The pimp threw her at Boba’s feet, and she groveled. “I’m sorry I didn’t make you come. Please don’t hurt me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Boba said. The pimp tossed him a clicker for the shock collar, and he nearly didn’t catch it. “Come on.” Boba led her a few blocks away before stopping. “Let’s get you out of this.” He figured out how to remove the collar by simultaneously holding a button on its clasp and on the clicker.

The woman didn’t speak, too nervous.

Boba looked at the collar. It was a decent piece of tech, so he pocketed it. Then he shoved his entire pouch of credits into the Twi’lek’s hands. “This is for you. That’s enough to enroll you at the local university. But you can do whatever you want with it. You’re free.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Go on, get out of here.”

She took two steps backward, studying him, then turned and ran.

Boba ambled back to the shipyard.

The droid dock attendant, flanked by a beefy enforcer, stopped him before he got on his ship. “Analysis of your gait and breath indicates that you are inebriated,” it said. “Your ship is grounded until you find me again and pass a sobriety test.” The droid stuck a flaking yellow circle on the side of the _Slave IV_ —a charge that would activate and rip a hole in Boba’s hull if it passed the shipyard’s energy field.

Boba growled at the implication that he couldn’t fly his ship _in his sleep_ , but the thug crossed his arms, and Boba decided he wasn’t in the mood for a fight. The _Slave IV’s_ door irised open then shut behind him.

“Initiate lockdown of all external apertures,” Boba told the ship so that he didn’t have to worry about intruders.

He grabbed another bottle from his liquor cabinet and climbed to the space that had once been Yani’s room. With the ship on its side, all her bedding had tumbled into a messy pile. Her absence was a rip in spacetime, a gaping wound in the fabric of reality. Boba wished he could inhale the familiar scent of her, but he didn’t know what she smelled like. He wished he could bring her back, but he knew that she’d left for good reason.

Sitting and staring at the empty jumble of bedding, Boba opened the bottle and took a drink.


	30. Pilot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incredible DramaticBeast73 made a Spotify playlist for this story! Go check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3DC2us8m2f0O8a9LKXoqiK?si=zOCADYe1Rrq6FvOER31Ewg&utm_source=copy-link

“Race you back to the shipyard,” came Havanet’s voice through Yani’s speaker.

Yani grinned. “You’re on.”

It had been a month since Yani had broken up with Boba and found a new job with a Corellian shipping company. The work wasn’t the most interesting, just flying barges loaded with boxes around the planet. But she loved having a steering wheel and switches under her hands. And one day, they might let her pilot space missions.

Yani urged her barge to nearly maximum speed—a measly 25 klicks per hour—which was why “races” like this with her crewmates on other barges were jokes more than serious competitions.

She loved the people here, too. Corellia was filled with explorer types and inventors and beings to which she might have applied the word “scoundrel.” It had been the home of Han Solo, and every so often, someone claimed to have met him. This was usually met with eye-rolling and disbelief.

The camaraderie between workers at the company was jovial and deep, and they had instantly welcomed Yani into their ranks. They were used to adding and dropping new members fast; Corellians had wanderlust in spades.

Havanet, another barge pilot, had become a particularly good friend. She’d helped Yani find an apartment and taken her shopping to help her blend in. Corellian fashion had made an industry out of jumpsuits and leather jackets. Seriously, Yani had never seen so many kinds of jumpsuits in her life. Right now, she wore a loose, sideless one with many pockets that zipped up to her chin. Underneath was a tight-fitting, long-sleeved shirt in a pale neutral color.

“Come on, baby.” Yani encouraged her clunky barge down the dusty streets. Through her side viewport, she saw Havanet keeping pace with her. She let the other woman ease ahead of her; if Havanet was pushing her barge at its max capacity, it was going to give out soon.

Like that. Havanet cursed like a spacer when her barge sputtered and groaned and lagged suddenly behind.

Yani pulled into the shipyard with a three-second lead. “Ha!”

“Scrapping rustbucket,” Havanet said through the speaker. “I should dismantle you for spare parts.”

Talking to her ship was a habit Yani had picked up from the others. If she ever returned to the _Slave IV_ , Boba would be shocked by how much she monologued to the ship.

If she ever returned.

She kept thinking about it, kept picturing a reunion with Boba and a return to their previous life. But she’d cut ties with him for a reason, and even though she missed him, she still struggled to make sense of her feelings.

She talked it out with Havanet and Marco (another friend from the company) at dinner later in a cozy diner. “This is going to sound pathetic, but I still miss him,” she said, pushing her food around with a spoon.

“The guy you crewed with?” Marco asked.

“Yeah.”

“What did he do again, anyway?” asked Havanet, swiping a flake of fish from Marco’s plate.

“It wasn’t so much what he did to me during our time together. I found out that before he met me, he’d done some really questionable things, and… I don’t know. I felt uncomfortable with them.” She could tell them that the man they were discussing was Boba Fett, which would provide them helpful details by which to give her advice, but she didn’t.

Yani sighed. “He was trying to be a better person. I know he was. It’s just, the things he used to do, I don’t think they’re the kinds of things you should ever forgive someone for, you know?”

“You’re really hung up on this guy,” Havanet observed. “My advice is the same—”

“Just date women,” Yani and Marco chorused.

Havanet laughed. “You know me so well.”

“Hey,” Marco said, “I’m all for dating women, but if she likes this dude, she should be allowed to pursue him. Does he like you back?” he asked Yani. “Do you know?”

Yani remembered Boba’s erection pressing into her ass, the way he swore, ‘I’d do anything for you.’ “He definitely likes me back.”

“So he has a terrible past, and he’s working on himself, but you don’t know if he’s really changed,” Marco said. “That sound right?”

“That’s it exactly. I wish there was some way to tell that he was serious about being better.”

Havanet hummed contemplatively. “They say that your true self is who you are when people aren’t looking.”

“Well, then my true self wears boxers and consumes fritzle fries at an unholy rate,” said Marco.

Havanet swatted his arm. “What I _meant_ was, if this guy was still committed to improving himself even without Yani there to see it, she could probably bet that the change was real. Like if he went out of his way to fix his mistakes even without the motivation of trying to get in Yani’s pants.”

“If I heard about him running around doing selfless deeds and spreading good cheer,” Yani said, “I’d take him back in an instant. But we cut off communication, so I won’t hear from him.” And she doubted that would happen. She’d had to cajole Boba into doing less problematic Guild work. For him to completely set bounty hunting aside and commit to helping others without her there to pressure him? She wasn’t getting her hopes up.


	31. Taris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the somewhat-delayed chapter. I had a busy day yesterday.

Boba landed on Taris, the planet where it all began. He made his way to the crummy local constable’s office and demanded to see the person in charge.

The constable had baggy eyes and the appearance of having been in shape not that long ago, like an ex-soldier now worn down by bureaucracy. He accepted Boba’s visit with wary resignation. “What can I do for you?” he asked, resting laced hands on his desk.

“I want to clean up your shit city,” Boba said. “I don’t need payment.” He glanced around at the peeling walls. “It doesn’t seem like you could afford it anyway. There are gangs and gambling rings and all kinds of criminal activity you could put a stop to if you had the right firepower. I’m that firepower.”

The constable leaned back and crossed his arms. “I’m not in the habit of granting police powers to thugs who waltz in off the street, especially ones with the reputation of being deeply criminally involved themselves.”

“I’m over all that. And I can give you valuable intel on some key figures in your planet’s underworld due to those criminal connections. Samjay Gun-Roc, head of the Black Hole cartel, is expecting a big spice shipment from Bib Fortuna at the end of the week. You catch the exchange in action, and you can put some high-ranking members of his cartel away.”

The constable’s eyes went wide. “I’ve never been able to predict their schedule. This could be my big opportunity. And you would go in with my men as another blaster?”

“I might even be able to teach them a thing or two.”

“I have to ask: why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?”

“There’s an owner of a spice den nearby who traffics Twi’lek girls. I want him locked up.”

—

Boba piloted a tiny spy droid into the warehouse where the spice transaction was going down. The constable’s priority had been gang activity, so Boba was doing these jobs first. But soon he would get to the missions he was truly here for: the raids on the brothels and spice dens.

The guards left outside the warehouse were tied up in a pile nearby. The constable’s peacekeepers crowded around the holoprojector in Boba’s other hand as an image appeared of the inside of the warehouse. Gun-Roc himself was there, handing a briefcase of credits to Fortuna’s representative. Gun-Roc’s cronies counted packets of spice.

“That enough evidence for you?” Boba asked.

“Is this recorded?” asked one of the peacekeepers. Fren was his name.

“Yes. All video is saved to the device.”

“Then that’s enough. Let’s head in.”

Boba pocketed the holoprojector and led the way to the warehouse’s door. The peacekeepers formed up around him, blasters held high. Boba gave silent hand signals. _Breaching in three, two, one._

—

The same bouncer stood outside the spice den: the one Boba had paid 500 credits to for Yani. At the sight of him, Boba’s heartbeat quickened, and he knew that this was a turning point. Memories of Yani came rushing back; he shoved them aside so he could finish the job.

Boba walked right up to the bouncer as before, looking like he intended to enter the spice den. But when he reached the bouncer’s side, he jabbed him in the arm with a needle, covered his mouth to muffle the shocked gasp, and dragged the unconscious body into a nearby alley where the peacekeepers waited.

One of them leaned down to cuff the bouncer.

“Right,” Boba reminded them in a whisper. “The stairs lead down into the main hallway, and rooms branch off on either side. The business offices are far in the back, and that’s where our pimps will be. I want one of you to secure each room along the way while I head to the back. Remember: no girls get hurt during this operation. Do you understand?”

They nodded.

—

Boba found the spice den’s owner in the deepest room, a dark, seedy office. He was a middle-aged human with a day-old beard. He was pressed into a corner, fumbling with an unfamiliar blaster.

“Boba Fett?” he said incredulously when he caught sight of the man leading the raid. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here on behalf of Yani.”

The owner took several moments to remember before recognition dawned. “That little blue schutta?”

‘Slut.’ Specifically, a Twi’lek slut. Boba put a blaster hole in the wall a foot from the man’s head for the insult.

He jumped, but he realized he’d struck a nerve. “You took her away from here, didn’t you?” he taunted. “Would no one fuck you but a girl you owned? How’s her pussy? I never got to try it. She spurned my advances.”

Boba seethed, itching to kill this cretin and be done with it. Before, he would have. But he was working with the law now, and more importantly, he wasn’t the kind of person who could kill creatures just for insolence anymore. The man would be locked away for a very long time, and that had to be enough. “Do you even know how to work that thing?” Boba asked.

The man glanced down at the blaster, and that split-second distraction was all Boba needed to close the distance between them and yank the blaster from his hands. He stumbled forward, and Boba used the momentum to push him onto the ground. Boba slapped binders around his wrists.

Outside the spice den, a crowd had gathered: dazed and high patrons patrolled by peacekeepers, workers from the den in binders, and a huddle of Twi’lek girls off to one side. Their faces were stricken, or numb, or suspicious, and they clutched their shoulders or each other’s hands. Boba turned the owner over to Fren, who thanked and casually saluted him.

Next, Boba retrieved the two people he’d hidden in a nearby building, leading them over to the Twi’leks. He knew his armored, gunned visage might be intimidating to people who were already traumatized and overwhelmed by the sudden raid, so he stayed a few yards away from the group as he spoke. “This is Kendrik.” Boba introduced the man. “He’s a social worker who specializes in drug addiction.”

Kendrik gave a friendly wave.

“And this is Mara from the woman’s shelter,” Boba said. “She’s going to take good care of you as long as you need it.” The shelter had recently received a large, anonymous donation that would help the girls get back on their feet.

Kendrik and Mara moved among the group, speaking in gentle tones and reassuring the girls that they were here to help.

One of the girls, Boba noticed, couldn’t have been older than fifteen, and he knew that he had finally done something right.

“Hold on!” called a woman as Boba turned to leave. It was one of the freed Twi’lek slaves. She stopped just short of grabbing onto Boba’s arm to halt him. “You helped Yani escape, didn’t you? Where is she? Is she all right?”

“She’s…” Boba almost said, ‘She’s not with me anymore.’ “I left her on Corellia. I’m not sure if she’s still there. But she has funds, I promise, and last I heard, she wanted to be a pilot.” Yani had access to all of Boba’s credit stashes on top of the money he’d given her. He hadn’t changed any of the codes.

“Can you get in touch with her? Please, I need to hear that she’s okay.”

Boba carried the comlink with him everywhere, though he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t contact Yani first. He didn’t want to come across like he was bragging about what he’d done on Taris; he hadn’t done it to impress Yani. But her friend deserved to speak with her. “Here,” Boba said, handing her the comlink. “She might have destroyed or thrown away the other one, though.”

The woman pressed the button to open communication and asked, “Yani?”

A few moments later, Yani’s incredulous voice said, “Anya? Is that you?”

Anya lit up with joy and relief. “How are you doing? I’ve been so worried about you! Yani, the other girls and I were freed tonight…”

Boba stepped away so that he didn’t have to hear Yani’s voice.


	32. The Muun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I really debated including this new character, but in the spirit of critiquing Star Wars, I wanted to touch on the wider racism present in the creation of certain alien species. For example, the Muuns are characterized by greed, stinginess, and running banks, which are harmful Jewish stereotypes. I wanted to bring in a Muun character to start a conversation about the antisemitism in their species, but is there a way to write Muun characters without antisemitism? Or should we just scrap the whole species?
> 
> The show _The Mandalorian_ gives me hope that Star Wars is beginning to recognize the harm done in its racial profiling. It addresses presentations of the Sand People. (I call them Sand People, not Tusken Raiders, because I think “Tusken Raiders” was a name given to them by outsiders and denotes a certain violence. If someone knows which term is more politically correct, please let me know.) The Sand People were portrayed in the original films as savage brutes, representing Native people in George Lucus’ “Cowboys and Indians” narrative. They were presented as a cross between Native Americans and Bedouin desert-dwellers—so, very definitely people of color, in contrast to the “civilized” world of Tatooine’s settlements.
> 
> But _The Mandalorian_ humanizes them a little by showing that they are sentient creatures, too, who don’t deserve to be killed simply for existing. Din Djarin speaks with them through sign language. A Deaf actor (Troy Kotsur) was hired to develop Tusken Sign Language and to play one of the Sand People. As a hearing person who has studied ASL, seeing sign on screen made me giddy. It works so well because in real life, Native Americans used a sign language for thousands of years to communicate with other tribes who didn’t speak the same language and to communicate nonverbally on hunts. Look up Plains Indian Sign Language if you’re interested! It’s fascinating!
> 
> Anyway, a lot of harm has been done through the racial stereotyping in Star Wars, and only by talking about it and creating new narratives can we begin to undo that harm.

Yani didn’t know how to feel after her call with Anya. Relief and joy were obvious regarding her friends being freed, but how should she feel about Boba having done the freeing? So he was cleaning up Taris now, seemingly without any motivation to return to her because she hadn’t heard his voice even once on the call, and he hadn’t contacted her since to discuss the freed slaves. It was the exact circumstance she’d described in her ultimatum, and so she should be running back to him with open arms.

And yet, she hesitated. More than Boba’s moral character was on the table. She had a life on Corellia now, and sure, it could be dull at times, but it was her own. If she ran back to Boba, would she be swept up again in the tide of his whims? Flying around with him and letting him decide where to go next had been all right for a while, but Yani wanted to make her own choices.

So she lingered in indecision.

Havanet, Marco, and Yani went to their favorite diner one evening as they had many times before, but this time there was a new face at their typical booth: a Muun, tall and thin with an elongated scalp. He stared dejectedly at his food. The diner was packed, but somehow there was a bubble of empty chairs around the newcomer.

“‘Scuse us,” Havanet said, strutting right up to him. “You’re in our booth.”

He winced. “Pardon me. I’ll just move.”

“No need.” Havanet and the others slid into the booth with him. “You just have to put up with some company.”

Yani ended up opposite him, so she had a front-row view of his shock. “What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Yani.”

“Ta Sivee, at your service.”

A waitress came by to take the orders of Yani and her friends. The Muun eyed them warily, as if he were waiting for the punchline of a cruel joke.

Yani tried to pull him into the conversation. “Where are you from?”

“Muunilinst,” he said. “I was with the Intergalactic Banking Clan.” He name-dropped the infamous company and eyed them for their reaction.

“I heard that the Clan’s not much active anymore,” Marco said.

“Yes, and thankfully I got out before the collapse began.”

“Well, I’m Marco, and this nerf-herder is Havanet. We were both born and bred on Corellia, and though we’ve left the planet several times, we can’t seem to stay away.”

“I’m from Taris,” Yani said. “I was a slave there.”

“And now you are free, living and working on your own?” Ta Sivee asked. “That is admirable of you. I am always impressed by beings who break their stereotypical molds.” He looked down. “I am trying to do it myself.”

“Is that why you left the IGBC?” Yani asked.

“Indeed.”

The food arrived, and Marco and Havanet tucked in, but Yani was still curious about the Muun’s story. She’d heard the phrase ‘Stingy as a Muun’ before and had pictured the species as selfish money-grabbers, but Ta Sivee was remarkably pleasant. “So what brings you to Corellia?”

He was warming up to them. “I’ve been traveling the galaxy looking for work. But it’s difficult to find people willing to hire a Muun who also don’t despise us or wish to take advantage of our less-than-savory reputations. How easy it is to employ a Muun accountant then use him as a scapegoat for your own greed. What I really want,” he leaned forward, “is some big,  _ worthwhile _ project that I can apply my fiscal skills to, around beings I respect and who respect me in return. You can imagine how many of those projects I have come across.”

“But,” Marco furrowed his brow, “you still want to work in finance? What about breaking the mold?”

Ta chuckled and put his hands in his lap. “Yes, I’m a rather pathetic representative of challenging stereotypes, aren’t I? My friend decided to quit and become a painter! She’s extraordinary, too. I gave it a try at her insistence, but after wasting too much of her expensive acrylics, I realized that art wasn’t for me.” He looked shy. “I left the Banking Clan because I wasn’t comfortable with what we were doing or how it made people view us. But working with numbers is what I’m good at and what I enjoy. Whether an analytical mind is a biological predisposition, as some creatures claim of us, is up for debate. Personally, I believe my affinity for logic came about because that is what our planet values and nurtures.

“Not just our planet. It’s what every creature in the galaxy  _ expects _ of us, to the exclusion of our personhood. They give us no other options, and at times even write  _ laws _ that limit our career paths. So what else are we supposed to do? Finance becomes the only way we can gain some measure of respect and power.”

Here, Yani was confronted with speciesism different from her own, but it echoed familiarly. She always felt like she had to justify herself to strangers for the privilege of interacting with them as equals. Even down to the way she dressed nowadays, her awareness of how she presented herself in relation to stereotypes of Twi’lek sluts was always on her mind.

“Forgive my outburst,” Ta said. “I tend to rant about this.”

“I totally get it,” Yani said. “I can’t display the least bit of sexuality without fearing that people will see a  _ Twi’lek _ instead of _me_. And is it my duty to never dress provocatively again, even if I want to, simply to give other creatures a counter-narrative?”

Ta nodded along. “Exactly. If I exercise my talents, people don’t say, ‘Oh, he is good at economics,’ they say, ‘Oh,  _ Muuns _ are good at economics.’ Though not all of us are or wish to be.”

After dinner, Ta pulled Yani aside and gave her a silver, twisty comlink of a style she’d never seen before. She might have to invest in one of those comlink chains to carry multiple around. “Here,” Ta said. He had to bend over to speak with her because he was so tall, and she was decidedly not. “I wish you to have this so that you and I can keep in touch.”

“Thank you.” She pocketed it. “It was really nice to meet you. You gave me a lot to think about.”

“You as well.”

Later still, as Marco was walking her back to her apartment (they’d just dropped off Havanet at hers), Marco said, “I didn’t know you felt that way about your sexuality.”

“Yeah.” She watched the ground as she walked, feeling surprisingly peaceful after the talk with Ta.

“I don’t know if this would help, and please forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds, if this is offensive, I can back off and we never have to mention it again…”

Yani stopped walking so she could focus on her friend. “What is it? I won’t get mad.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “If you want, like, a safe space to explore having sex again, I would do that for you.” He rushed to add, “That sounds like it would be a chore to me! It wouldn’t! You’re beautiful, but mostly you’re my friend, and I just want you to be comfortable.”

She couldn’t help smiling at his puppy-dog eagerness. “I’m not offended. Thank you for the offer, but I’m going to have to decline.”

“Hey, no worries.” He switched the conversation to their work schedules for the next day and didn’t let her rejection sour his mood.

Back in her apartment, alone, Yani sat cross-legged on the bed. Why had she refused Marco? He was handsome and kind, and she felt wholly comfortable with him. Just, when he’d propositioned her, she realized that the only person she wanted was Boba.

She pulled out the comlink he’d given her and held down the button. “Boba?”

His response was nearly immediate, though she didn’t know what time schedule he was keeping, if it were day or night for him. “Yani?”

“Can we talk?”


	33. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok y'all, I learned that Twi'leks don't have naturally sharp teeth; lots of them (mostly men) just file their teeth to points. So THAT MEANS that Yani gave herself little fangs! 😍

“I want to come back,” Yani had told Boba.

He’d been overjoyed. They talked about what they’d both been up to, and Yani mentioned her fear of losing her independence by returning to him. “I have one more thing to make right,” Boba said, “but then we can do whatever you want. I’m yours.”

“Can you come to Corellia? I want to see you.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” he’d said. “Yani? Thank you for giving me another chance.”

He was supposed to arrive sometime today, and Yani was antsy, looking over her shoulder whenever she caught sight of someone Boba’s size.

“Is that him?” Havanet asked about a stranger passing by. Her friends knew that she was reuniting with her man today, though Yani couldn’t figure out how to break his identity to them. Oh well. They’d figure it out soon.

“Nope,” Yani said. “He’s a little shorter. Stockier.”

“I can’t wait to meet this guy,” Marco said. “Since you’re clearly head over heels for him.”

The back of Yani’s neck warmed in recognition of this truth. She was completely mad for Boba. But where the kriff was he? “It’s almost six o’clock,” she fretted. “What if he doesn’t come? Maybe I should wait in the shipyards.”

“Relax, girlie,” Havanet said. “If he’s into you, he’ll be here. Let’s just get dinner like normal, and if he hasn’t shown up by the time we finish, you can comm him again and ask where the fuck he thinks he is.”

Yani inhaled deeply and let out her breath. He would be here. He would.

And he was  _ there _ when they stepped into the diner. He was sitting at the bar, and he stood up at their entrance, helmet fixed on Yani.

Her friends moved in front of her, tension-filled. “Do you have a bounty out for you?” Havanet whispered.

“Get her out of here,” Marco said. “I’ll hold him off.”

Yani pushed past her friends, yanked off Boba’s helmet, and threw herself into a kiss. Maybe she should’ve stopped to think, or paused to catch up with him first, or asked permission before unmasking him in front of all these strangers.

He didn’t seem to mind.

“Yani,” he mumbled into her lips as he kissed her back. One of his hands cradled her head, and the other held her close to his body, his touch searing through her clothes. He moaned a little deep in his throat as he licked into her mouth, heedless of their audience.

Yani couldn’t find it in her to mind, either. She was kissing Boba. At long, long last, she was _kissing him_ , and it was warm and passionate and everything she had craved.

“Hold on,” Havanet shouted. “The dude you’re into is _Boba Fett_?”

Yani giggled and pulled away from the kiss, smoothing her hands over Boba’s head. “I didn’t exactly warn them,” she confessed.

“I can see that.”

His half-smile was so achingly familiar that Yani had to press her lips to his again, just briefly. Then she handed him back the helmet. “Sorry for ripping this off without warning.”

He replaced it, hiding the affection shining from his features, but his body language conveyed no less fondness. He stayed close to her, tilted toward her, gloved fingertips brushing along her arm.

“Are you going to introduce us?” Marco asked.

Yani finally noticed her surroundings. Her friends were wide-eyed, with weary, defensive stances. The other patrons in the diner were silent, mesmerized by the evening’s unexpected entertainment. “Sorry. Marco, Havanet, this is Boba. Boba, these are my friends from the shipping company I work at.”

Boba nodded sharply.

Havanet clapped her hands together. “All right. Why don’t we all sit down, have a civilized meal, and get to know one another? You,” she pointed at Yani, “have some explaining to do.”

Yani couldn’t stop grinning as she slid into their favorite booth with Boba beside her. It was like both her lives were colliding, and Boba was so out of place, but he was here, he was trying to fit in.

He seemed torn between remaining stoically aloof and showering affectionate touches on Yani. He compromised by setting his hand on her knee under the table.

“So.” Marco broke the silence once they were all seated. “Yani, how come you never told us you dated a celebrity?”

Boba huffed. “That’s one of the nicer things I’ve been called.”

“How did you guys meet?” Havanet asked. She couldn’t stop looking back and forth between the two of them.

“He saved me from slavery,” Yani said.

Boba met her eye. “You saved me, too.”

Then they just stared at one another like fools until Yani understood why people found couples in love insufferable. She was full to bursting with adoration.

Havanet cleared her throat. “So do you plan on swooping in here and running off with our girl?”

“It’s her choice,” Boba said. “Yani, I would love it if you came with me, but I know that you have a life here now.” He glanced at the others. “And companions who care about you. Perhaps I could come by and visit?”

“You said you had one more thing to do. Where are you going?”

“Tatooine.”

The word hung heavy in the air. Kateel. He was going to free that girl he’d left in Jabba’s Palace. “I’ll come,” Yani said. She wanted to be there to support him. “They aren’t paying me near enough here, anyway.”

Havanet snorted. “You got that right.”

Boba squeezed her thigh.

It was late by the time Boba walked Yani back to her apartment. She wanted to invite him in, but it was so messy that she was embarrassed. Boba always kept his ship in spotless condition. And as much as she yearned to pull him down onto her bed and make up for all the lost time, she was tired. And maybe it was too soon; she didn’t want to overwhelm him.

“How is your arm holding up?” he asked.

“It healed quickly with bacta. The company medic who checked me out was impressed with your stitches.”

“Again, my apologies for ever bringing you near Kuat. Everything about that encounter was my fault. The man who stabbed you, I recognized him as one who’d given me jealous looks after I left Kuat’s the first time.”

That was nearly funny, in a sad way. “One of Kuat’s other lovers?”

“I suppose.”

They neared the apartment building. “Can you come over and help me pack up my stuff tomorrow?” Yani asked.

“Of course.” He got the hint and stopped at the stairs leading up to her place on the second floor.

Yani leaned forward and touched her forehead to his helmet, the closest she could get to a kiss with him wearing it. “Thank you for everything you did on Taris. And I know you’re going to say that you don’t need thanks, that you were atoning for past misdeeds, but thank you anyway. My friends are safe because of you.”

As she ascended the stairs, she felt such peace at being united with Boba that without thinking about it, her lekku naturally crossed twice in a twist—a sign in the nonverbal language of Twi’leks.

“Yani!” Boba called from the ground. “I love you too.”

She whipped around. Oh gods, Boba recognized the sign. She hadn’t been thinking ‘I love you’ when she’d signed it—you didn’t explicitly think the word ‘hello’ when you waved—but that’s what the gesture meant, and she meant it. She just hadn’t expected him to understand. Blushing, she hurried into her apartment and shut the door.


	34. Spotchka

Boba rechecked all his armor’s sensory preceptors to verify that he wasn’t hallucinating. No, body heat signatures showed one Twi’lek female and two other humans in the room with him, smelling like oil, apparently. This was real. Yani was really coming with him.

Together they packed Yani’s possessions into two plastoid crates brought from his ship. Marco went with Yani to turn in her resignation and collect her pay, and the woman, Havanet, stayed behind with Boba to keep an eye on him.

“I don’t trust you,” Havanet said after they’d been alone for a while.

“Good. You’re not a fool. Don’t trust beings you’ve just met, especially ones with nasty reputations.” Boba ignored her, willing her to leave him alone, and kept folding Yani’s shirts.

“What do you want with Yani?”

Boba sighed and faced Havanet. “If I just wanted Yani for her body or planned to sell a pretty Twi’lek off to the highest bidder as you seem to think, would I really admit it? But as it so happens, I love her. Not that I need to justify myself to the likes of you. Yani’s a grown woman capable of making her own decisions.”

“I’d be remiss in my duties as a friend if I let Boba Fett descend from the sky one day and pluck her from her life without asking a few questions. Is she going to be safe with you?”

Kuat was still out there, and Boba planned on bringing her straight to one of the galaxy’s crime centers. “I swear that I’ll do my best to protect her.”

Havanet scowled, as unsatisfied with that reply as he was, but just then, the others returned.

—

Havanet and Marco said their goodbyes, and then he and Yani carried the crates on a rented hovercraft back to the ship.

“The _Slave IV_ ,” Yani said when it came into view. “I’ve missed you, you hunk of junk.”

Boba didn’t quite know what to think of Yani addressing his ship like that, but he did have a correction to make. “It’s not the _Slave IV_ anymore. I renamed it after my father’s old ship, before the first _Slave_. This is _Jaster’s Legacy_.” ‘Slave’ had been a sharp, impersonal word meant to put people on guard, but he no longer needed to strike fear into any creature’s version of cardiac muscles. And the name had hurt Yani, who had actually been a slave.

Yani gave him a look he couldn’t read.

Embarrassed, Boba coughed and picked up one of the crates, carrying it up the ramp.

Yani pulled up short in the doorway. “What happened to the cage?”

Oh, that. Boba had gotten so used to its absence that he’d forgotten he made the change. He set down the crate and moved to the wall that used to be enclosed in bars. “I didn’t need it anymore. And I have extra space now, so I put in a table.” He pulled down the square of plastoid that had lain flat against the wall. “An actual table that I can sit down at. It flips the other way, too, for when the ship is in flight.” He demonstrated by turning it vertically along a side connected to the wall, so that it would rest at sitting height when the ship turned ninety degrees.

Yani was staring with wonder and disbelief. “You got rid of the cage.”

Boba stored the table. “Yeah.” He was at a loss for what else to say.

Yani put away her things then explored the rest of the ship, but there were no more drastic changes to discover. “There’s a little plant in your room!” she exclaimed.

Well, maybe one. “I read something about greenery improving mental health, especially on a spaceship.”

“I love the little swing you set up so it can stay vertical!”

Boba didn’t reply. He made final checks before departure to verify that everything was in working order. Then he buckled into the pilot’s seat for liftoff, and Yani settled into her chair behind him. With her occupying the empty seat, everything was right again.

Up in space, he broke the silence. “According to Corellia’s cycles, it’s morning, but from my point of view, it’s early afternoon. I did start catching up on jet lag when I was planetside, but it might take us a few days to even out. It’s not a huge difference. I’m just going to get tired earlier.”

“Are you sure it’s not because you’re getting old?” Yani joked.

Boba had forgotten what it was like to have her around, cracking jokes and keeping him on his toes. He was stunned into silence for a moment before he laughed. “It’s good to have you back,” he said.

—

As the day wore on, Boba became more and more restless. Yani was back, they were hurtling through space, and he kept waiting for something to go wrong—a ship to attack, Yani to change her mind and beg to be returned. And with her nearness and the memory of the soft way she’d signed “I love you” at their parting, his lust swelled.

He wanted to shove his tongue down her throat like it was the last time he ever got to taste her. And it might be. So much could go wrong. If he came on too strong, she could be scared off. The moment he stripped naked, she might realize that she wasn’t, in fact, as into scarred older men as she thought. Or what if in his desperation, he came too fast and disappointed her?

He jerked off in the refresher to relieve some of the ache of desiring her and as a precaution against finishing prematurely, in case they, in case Yani wanted…

He wasn’t as tired as he thought he’d be that evening; stress kept him worked up. He followed Yani’s energetic voice as she called him into the hull.

“Boba! Get down here! I didn’t realize you had spotchka. You don’t keep it in a clear bottle like everyone else.”

“Why are you so excited?” he asked. “It’s just another kind of alcohol.”

“But it glows!” Yani insisted, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “You can play drinking games with it. Here, take a seat, and I’ll be right back.”

Boba settled on the ground, remembering the last time they drank together and how close they had come to sex.

Yani slid back into the hull with a bottle of spotchka and five shot glasses. She lined them up in a row on the ground and poured glowing blue liquid into each. Then she stoppered the bottle, cutting off its light, and turned off the other hull lights too. “The girls and I back on Taris did this all the time. You drink down the line of spotchka, and the room gets darker and darker until it’s black.”

And then what? Boba thought he knew, but he wasn’t going to press her for specifics and ruin the moment.

Yani’s skin glowed in the azure light. She took the glass on one of the ends and gestured for him to take the other. “Cheers,” she said and knocked it back.

Boba swallowed his, too.

“Spotchka isn’t super potent,” Yani said. “So if you want to get drunk, you have to do a really long line of shots, but that can be fun. Draw out the evening.”

If she’d only poured out five, did that mean she didn’t want to draw this encounter out? Or that she didn’t want to get drunk? How many shot glasses did he have anyway? Maybe she could only find five.

Yani was so breathtakingly gorgeous in the faint illumination from the drinks. She leaned one hand on the ground and shifted a little closer to him.

“I missed you so much,” Boba said. “I got used to you being gone, and now, having you back… I never want to let go of you again.”

She watched him with her dark, dark eyes.

He kept talking. “I’m trying to improve myself. Every criticism you made was deserved, and I’ve taken them to heart. I’m not perfect yet, and I never will be, but I’m better.”

“I can tell,” she said. “I never expected,” she glanced at the filled-in holes where the cage bars used to reside, “this much progress. I love who you are now, Boba, and I can’t wait to keep meeting you. I’ve really missed you too.”

They did another shot, and the darkness intensified. Yani slid even closer, and Boba wrapped an arm around her waist. They stayed there for long heartbeats, feeling each other’s breath. It was finally happening. Boba had her in his arms, and she wanted to be there.

The low illumination erased the last of their inhibitions. Yani brushed Boba’s neck, almost a caress, and the touch plus her half-closed eyes sent blood rushing to his dick.

Boba fingered the lip of the last glass. “What happens when it goes completely dark?” he asked.

“Anything,” she breathed.

Boba knocked back the final shot and pulled Yani into a kiss.


	35. At Last

Yani tasted the alcohol on Boba’s breath as he kissed her. She pulled him down on top of her, and he followed her guidance easily, supporting himself with an arm near her head.

Finally. _Finally_. Oh, how Yani had pictured this moment, fantasized about it late at night. Being with Boba. Feeling his warm, heavy weight settle on top of her, feeling him groan into her mouth and slip his tongue past her parted lips.

She clutched the back of his head, keeping him close. “Boba,” she murmured.

His knee rested between her legs, pinning her skirt to the ground and trapping her, but it also pressed into the apex of her thighs. Did he know what it was doing to her? When he shifted a little, it dug deeper, and she gasped, fighting the urge to rock against his thigh just to feel more friction.

She loved touching him in the pitch blackness of the hull, sans windows to let in even the meager light of stars. At the same time, she wished she could see his face, the swell of his shoulder as he switched to kissing her neck.

Boba supported the back of her head just under her lekku as he mouthed at her throat. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he said into her skin between kisses. “Wanted to bury my cock in you. Wanted to kiss you.”

“In that order?”

Boba chuckled deep in his throat. “Any order.” He returned to her mouth.

Yani closed her eyes. “Now’s your chance.” More, she needed more. She fumbled with Boba’s shirt, pinned between them, trying to pull it off him.

He shakily inhaled. “I, we can go slow if you want.”

She shook her head. She needed him inside her to quell the fire in her belly. “Later. Another time. Just want you.”

Boba groaned, sat up, and began pulling off his clothes, kicking off the boots.

Yani scrabbled to extract herself from her clothing, too, shivering at the press of cool metal on her butt and feet. Maybe they should move to one of their beds? But she was too eager, too scared to mess this up, couldn’t risk losing the fervor by changing location.

Boba either perceived her shiver or guessed her discomfort, for he spread out a double layer of their clothes for her to lie back on. Then he covered her with his body again.

She groped for him in the dark, trying to pull him closer, closer still. She felt the slide of his cock against her stomach and tried to visualize its size, but she couldn’t reach a conclusion. Yani slid a hand between their bodies to test her wetness and see if she needed more foreplay or lube, but her fingers came back slick. She dragged them down Boba’s back. “Fuck me, Boba.”

He took himself in hand and guided his tip to her entrance. His voice was thick as he asked, “Are you sure?”

She couldn’t handle any longer of a wait. “Yes! Gods, Boba. Put your dick in me.”

He pushed into her.

Yani let out a strangled cry, adjusting to the overwhelming _pleasure_ of it. Her nails dug into the flesh of Boba’s back, keeping him snugly against her as she acclimated to the stretch. She hadn’t had a dick inside her in months, and now she had Boba’s, the only one she wanted ever again.

He made an experimental movement of his hips, and Yani whimpered for him to continue. He dragged his cock nearly free and thrust into her again, jolting her backward. “Ebullia’s boiling blood,” he cursed. “You feel so good.”

Yani fell in love with Boba all over again when he said odd things that reminded her he had a life all his own full of things to discover about him. She crushed her lips to his and swallowed his moans. She adored his vocality during sex.

Boba picked up the pace, and his kisses turned sloppy as he lost focus. “So wet, Yani. So good.”

She wondered why it had taken them this long to fuck, but knew that there had never been a good moment. Boba had still been struggling, adjusting to a new way of life, and she’d been too recently freed without taking the time to process her trauma. But now? Well, the sex was worth the wait.

Boba was deep, deep in her stomach, and she barely recognized the sounds he was pulling out of her—the little gasps and moans. Each drag of his cock was bliss, and so was each huff of his breath coming quicker and quicker.

Yani’s legs grew stiff and sore from being in one position so long, and so she hitched them up over his hips. The shift in angle meant that Boba was now stimulating a certain spot inside her that had her shaking, even as his pelvis rubbed against her clit. “Yes, yes, yes.” Yani wanted Boba to feel as good as she did. She slid her hands up his back and nibbled at his ear, his neck, trying to clench down around him.

Boba gave a rasping shudder and redoubled his speed, pounding into her. Sweat-slick bodies tensed together until Yani began a litany of “Please, please,” begging for something she couldn’t name. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Please, Boba. Harder. More, I need more.” He gave it to her.

And then she groaned, would’ve knocked her head against the durasteel floor had Boba not been holding it, as her muscles clenched and her orgasm shot through her like the energy of a plasma bolt spread throughout her body. Boba was still fucking her, and the friction prolonged the pleasure.

“Where can I—” he asked helplessly.

She still rode waves of her high. “Inside. I have the implant. Boba, come inside me.”

He needed no more prompting, spilling into her with several tense thrusts and a grunt of exertion.

Yani expected him to pick himself up immediately and get dressed, but Boba lingered on top of her, easing more of his weight down tentatively as if scared to crush her. His chest heaved, and so did hers.

Boba shocked her by kissing her—the sweetest, softest kiss they’d yet shared, though they hadn’t shared many. “Don’t go,” he said. “Just stay with me a bit longer.”

Yani felt a tingling, toe-curling satisfaction at being the object of such tenderness. He was so _gentle_. However, now that they weren’t fucking, the hardness of the floor and the muscle tension in her thighs were getting uncomfortable. “I’m not going anywhere,” she reassured him. “But could we move to your bed?”

“Of course.” He kissed her again. “As long as I never have to let you go again.”


	36. Contentment

Boba didn’t want to stop touching Yani, didn’t want to end the moment, so he kept one hand on her even as they stood. They didn’t bother dressing, just climbed out of the hull and slipped into Boba’s room. Emerging into the light should’ve shocked sense into Yani. True, she’d just fucked him, but it had been in the dark where she didn’t have to see his body. Now that it was on full display, she would recoil from the scars, turn her face away, suggest they put their clothes back on.

Except she didn’t. She still looked at him with the brightest, happiest gaze.

Now, Boba lay propped up on one elbow in his bed, facing Yani. She was on her stomach with her arms cradling her head and a smile gracing her lips. They were covered from the waist down by a blanket, but the blue expanse of her back was on full display. Boba trailed his fingers down her spine in awe.

“You are so beautiful,” he said.

“In an ‘exotic’ way?”

His hand stilled. “Yani, I am so sorry for that. I was repeating things others had said without giving them critical thought. I should have. I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you. You know you made a mistake.”

A horrid one that had alienated her and fetishized her differences. Boba resumed stroking her back. “Do you mind if I touch your lekku?”

“Not at all. Just be gentle. If you ever try and use them as handlebars, I will slap you. That kriffing hurts.”

Noted. Boba had actually learned about the sensitivity of lekku when he’d researched Twi’leks several weeks back, trying to educate himself, or at least bring himself up-to-speed on basics. The research was the reason he’d recognized the “I love you” sign. Boba remembered reading about how many nerve endings lekku contained and wincing at the thought of porn actresses dragged around by their head-tails. Lesson learned, in case there had been doubt: pornography was not good sex education.

So Boba was infinitely gentle as he brushed one lek with his fingertips. Yani’s contented whine encouraged him to keep stroking.

She closed her eyes and relaxed. “I never stopped thinking about you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Sometimes in bars, people would mention you, just gossiping, and I’d sit near to listen.”

Shavit. What had she heard about his past? What else did he have to atone for? His mind swam with unsavory possibilities.

“I heard that you can keep it up even in zero gravity.” Her voice was teasing.

Boba let out a deep breath in a chuckle. She’d been listening to wild rumors, not stories about terrible things he’d done. “Who said that?”

“Some spacer who I’m pretty sure was just making stuff up so we’d buy him more drinks. So is it true?”

“I’ve heard that it’s difficult because of lowered blood pressure in microgravity, so I’ve never tried.”

Yani wiggled. “We should try sometime.”

That meant she wanted to have sex with him again. “Why, you want to set me up for failure?”

“If it works, I get sex, yay, and a fun story. If it doesn’t, I get to laugh at your cute self. Want to know what else people were saying?”

“Do enlighten me.”

“‘Boba Fett can hit a target a parsec away with a single shot from his ship,’” Yani quoted. “‘One time, Boba Fett turned down 50,000 credits because the mission involved taking his helmet off. Boba Fett builds his own seismic charges from the scraps of ships he’s destroyed. Once, on a dare, Boba Fett disarmed every thug in Jabba’s Palace with his _face_.’” She paused. “Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the picture.”

Was that really how the galaxy saw him? Did they live vicariously through a gunslinging stranger they would never meet, one onto which they could project their own fantasies of masculinity and violence? He’d always found the universe’s creatures somewhat pathetic, but this was a new low.

“I have another question,” Yani said, switching topics. “Whose boiling blood did you curse by earlier?”

Boba laid down with an arm behind his head, and Yani propped her chin on her hands to peer at him. He hadn’t expected to be giving a theology lesson today. “Ebullia. She’s a goddess from the space pantheon. Most planets have their own religions, but after millennia of space travel, the creatures who spend the majority of their time in the black developed a mythology of their own. I wouldn’t say I worship them, exactly, but they’re the gods I’m familiar with. Ebullia is the goddess of dying out in the vacuum.”

“That’s fascinating! What are some others?”

“The God of Stranded Spacers is the patron of people stuck in the middle of nowhere for whatever reason—maybe a broken hyperdrive—who drift and wait for either rescue or death. Our Lady of the Divine Dark is a creation goddess, a vast primordial one. She represents the darkness from whence all life and matter came. Then there’s Noboa, the God of Distant Stars. He stretches from one sun to another like a long, thin serpent, keeping his tail dipped in the first star until his nose reaches the next,” Boba tapped Yani’s nose, “and then he coils himself around it and looks for the next star to journey to.”

“I don’t really pray much,” Yani said.

“Would it be trite to say I want to worship you?”

“Yes,” Yani said, though she couldn’t hold back a grin. “It would.”

Boba leaned into a kiss, opening his mouth against Yani’s and letting his eyes drift closed in pleasure. He would never get enough of her, even if he spent a lifetime by her side.

“You up for another round?” Yani asked.

He responded by rolling on top of her.

This time was slower, savory. Boba lingered, just kissing her mouth, then moved to her breasts and fulfilled his promise to worship her. He sucked a nipple into his mouth and delighted in the noise she made. He licked around her nipple. Sucked a mark below it—all while squeezing the other in his hand. He switched breasts to Yani’s groan.

He traveled down her body, opening her legs. There wasn’t much room in his cot; one of her knees was pressed to the wall. But they would make do. Boba ran two knuckles up and down her slit, noting the lack of hair (had she shaved?) and liking the slickness already dripping from her cunt. He spread open her folds with his fingers and lowered his face.

Gods, it was good. He took his sweet time learning what made her whimper and clutch his head to tug him closer. Her nails scratched lightly on his neck when he swirled his tongue around her clit. He had to keep forcing himself back down because he wanted to raise his face to watch her expressions.

“I’m going to spread another rumor,” Yani moaned, “that you’re really, really good at eating pussy. It must be all that practice with your castle full of conquests.”

Boba rubbed her with his fingers so he could pause and ask, very genuinely, “ _What the kriff?_ ”

“Oh, you haven’t heard that one? Some guy from Naboo was convinced you built a spaceport palace to hide all the women you’ve seduced, like a harem that floats through the galaxy. There are girls from every planet you’ve visited—beautiful, locked away, pining after you when you’re absent. You’re the only one who knows how to find the palace, so if you die, they will waste away, and no one will ever rescue them. It’s all tragically romantic.”

Boba gaped at her. There were beings out there romanticizing his life, spinning ridiculous tales about what he was up to when not on hunts. The truth was far less dramatic. Mostly he ate meals alone and cleaned things. But he supposed the mystery of the helmet might spark people’s imaginations, make them wonder what else besides his face he was hiding from them.

Yani canted her hips into his hand. “I didn’t say you could stop.”

Boba returned to licking her cunt. He sucked on her clit and curled two fingers inside her until her legs shuddered and clenched around his head. Now he was going to fuck her again, fuck her until she couldn’t walk, until she forgot every silly story and just remembered _this_.

“Wait,” Yani said, pushing his chest. She flipped onto her stomach again. “Is this okay?”

Boba groaned. He leaned over her and slid his dick along her ass. “Definitely okay.” Why wouldn’t he enjoy this view of her perfect butt, the slope of her spine, the curves of her lekku? Boba positioned his dick at her entrance and thrust into her slowly. He pulled out until just the tip was inside her and then pushed back in.

He would make this last. Enjoy every second of it. They still had days in hyperspace as they traversed nearly the whole length of the Corellian Run, days to spend with Yani before they faced their next trial.

Boba loosely fucked her as he eased onto one arm and gripped her waist with the other. In the face of her overwhelming loveliness, his insecurities grappled for his attention. “You don’t have to pretend to be enjoying this if you aren’t,” he told Yani. “I know I’m not the most good-looking man…”

“Boba. I love you. I want you.” Her tone left no room for argument. “You’d better quit that talk and concentrate on putting your cock as deep in me as possible.”

So he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up some space deities. What do you guys think?
> 
> Please comment suggestions for more outlandish rumors about Boba Fett. If y'all come up with any good ones, I'll include them in later chapters.


	37. Tatooine

To Yani, the vast, endless sands of the Dune Sea were a novelty. She had never seen so much barren land lacking buildings or signs of life. In her travels with Boba, she’d seen more of the galaxy’s fascinating and varied terrain than she ever imagined she would—more than a slave girl had any right to see. She craned her head to peer out the viewport. “How big _is_ the Dune Sea?” she asked Boba.

“Deadly big,” was all he replied. They landed at a spaceport in Mos Espa, and Boba thoroughly locked up the ship. “We’ll take a barge out to Jabba’s Palace,” he explained. “The ship is too big; it’ll draw attention. I’d prefer that we get in and out with the girl quietly.”

Wind whipped grainy particles through the streets. Yani wrapped a loose cloth around her head and mouth to block the worst of it, envying Boba for his helmet. As they walked in search of a rental spot, Yani perceived Boba’s tension. Was he worried about the upcoming breakout? Did he fear reuniting with Kateel? Or was it something else? She rested a hand on his arm.

Boba jolted, then forcibly relaxed. “Sorry. It’s just, this place. Lots of memories. I spent years running in and out of here on jobs for Jabba, and the things I did… And then there’s the Sarlacc…”

“Do you want to stop by the Sarlacc pit? It might be cathartic to see it again now that you’re free. I don’t know. But I know that ignoring your trauma doesn’t make it go away.”

“No. Let’s just do the job.” He shook her off and kept walking.

She sensed that she wouldn’t be changing his mind, so she sighed and followed.

They left the barge behind a dune five minute’s walk from the palace. The building rose as several round spires, one much thicker than the rest, topped with domes. The walls were colored the same rusty tan as the surrounding rocks.

Boba led them stealthily to a hidden cave entrance wedged at the base of the nearby mountain. “A network of tunnels and rooms lies underneath the palace,” he told her. “Good for making shady deals and engaging in other activities better left in the dark. I haven’t discovered all the secret entrances, but I think I’ve found most of them.” When the crack of daylight behind them faded, Boba switched on a light on his helmet. “Stay close to me. Keep a hand on my back.”

The cave was twisty and rough enough to be natural. Twice they had to squeeze through sideways, but they didn’t run into anyone else.

“Slave quarters should be nearby,” Boba whispered.

“Relax. No one will question Boba Fett’s presence in Jabba’s Palace. Is it Bib Fortuna’s Palace, now? And to explain me, you can just say you were bringing a dancing girl to one of those dark rooms for a private show.”

“That’s not a bad idea, and I hate it.” He walked farther before speaking again. “I’m sorry for bringing you here. If this place is triggering, we can leave immediately. I’ll come back alone later.”

She appreciated that. “I’m doing all right for now.” The cave straightened into a sentient-made hall.

“You know, we could drop by the throne room and pay Bib Fortuna a visit,” Boba said with forced casualty.

Yani had seen holos of the slimy, power-hungry Twi’lek man and had no desire to meet him. “Why? Do you and he have unfinished business?”

“You could say that. But no, now isn’t the time. Let’s focus on finding Kateel.”

They walked in silence, peering into alcoves but generally making their way in the direction of the slave barracks.

A slave found them first. In a heartbeat, Yani was yanked to a halt, wrapped in lithe arms tight to her torso, with a crude shiv pressed to her neck. Boba whipped around and pointed his blaster at the woman holding Yani. “I know you,” the woman told Boba in a voice that barely shook. “I knew you from before. And whenever you come here, you always look for me, though you never speak to me.” Her grip on Yani and the shiv and the tremor in her voice tightened. “Tell me who I am, or I slit your girl’s throat.”

Could this be Kateel? She was not what Yani expected.

Boba raised both hands slowly, pointing the blaster away. “That’s why we’re here. There’s no need for the knife.”

“We’ve come to rescue you,” Yani said.

“Your name is Kateel of Kuhlvult. You’re Kuati nobility. I wiped your memory and brought you here after your sister hired me to kill you.”

Kateel pushed Yani away and stumbled back.

Yani turned to get a good look at her. Kateel’s skin was deeply tanned; she’d spent time under Tatooine’s suns. Her black hair was shaved close to her scalp, and she had a mouth meant for sneering.

“It’s all coming back,” Kateel said. “Kodir envied that I was to inherit.” As they watched, Kateel’s already-proud posture straightened even more. “I knew I was meant for more than life as a dancing girl.”

_ Well, yeah_, Yani thought. _Every woman is._ But she let Kateel have her moment. 

Boba let his arms drop. “I apologize for what I did to you.”

Kateel scrutinized him, then sniffed. “You kept me alive, at least. No, _I_ did, for years, with no memory of who I was or hope for escape.” She raised her chin in a challenge. “I accept your apology, Boba Fett, on the terms that you assist me with a matter of my own.”

“What is it?”

“I’m going to unseat the current Kuat of Kuat and take his place as ruler of Kuat Drive Yards.”

Boba glanced at Yani for confirmation before replying. “Done.”


	38. Kateel of Kuhlvult

As Kateel explored _Jaster’s Legacy_ , Yani joined Boba in the cockpit. She leaned against the console and watched him fidget with a few switches.

He sat hunched over in the pilot’s chair, not meeting her eyes. “I remembered her as being a spoiled brat,” he confided quietly. He seemed almost lost. “But she survived Jabba’s Palace. That requires a certain strength.”

Even Yani had to fight an inclination to label Kateel similarly. But then she remembered Kuat’s dismissal of Kateel as a “bitch,” and that inclination vanished. Men were lauded for being assholes, or confident and capable, while women were punished.

“Would you…” Boba fingered another switch. “Would you give up your bed for her? I don’t have another mattress. You could sleep with me instead.”

Yani touched his shoulder, wanting to communicate that she was proud of him for trying to right his wrongs. “Yes, of course. And Boba? You’re doing the right thing, taking down Kuat. I know it will be hard.”

He shook his head. “Not after what he did to you.”

Yani squeezed his shoulder before she left.

In the low protrusion of the ship, Yani made up her bed with new sheets. “You can sleep here,” she told Kateel, who was watching her with sharp eyes.

“I am in your debt,” Kateel said. “What is your name?”

“Yani,” she said, straightening and facing the Kuati woman head-on.

“A slave name. They gave me one, too.”

Anya. Neelah. Yani. There was a pattern to the two-syllable names if you had the ear for it. They marked you, reminding you of your place. Like many other former slaves, Anya had changed hers after becoming free (to Dia, a Twi’lek word meaning ‘ice’). Yani… hadn’t. She didn’t want to forget where she came from.

“Does Fett own you?” Kateel asked. “I can help you get away from him. Bring you into my service. Once I rule Kuat, you will have an honored place at my right hand.”

It was the second time another woman had offered rescue from Boba; the first had been a waitress slipping her a scrap of durasheet. But Kateel’s assumption had undeniable merit, coming from the recognition that Yani was either currently enslaved or once had been. “No,” she said. “I’m free. But thank you for the offer.”

Kateel cocked her head without changing her inscrutable expression in the slightest. “Yet you travel with Boba Fett, a bounty hunter of ill repute, who you know to have enslaved at least one woman.”

“He also set a bunch free on my home planet.” She thought of her latest conversation with Boba and his altered opinion of Kateel. “I made him drink ‘respect women’ juice, and now he’s had to reconsider every interaction with women he used to think of as beneath him. He’s changed a lot.”

“The offer stands, should you wish to join me.” Kateel looked Yani up and down like scanning through her clothes to the deepest parts of herself. “You are meant to rule. I can tell.”

Maybe Kateel wasn’t a bitch, but she was bordering on _entitled_. Would she think, on the flip side of the coin, that some people were meant to be slaves? “I don’t think some people are born to rule over others,” Yani said.

“They are. But it is not so much a trait passed through a bloodline as a matter of temperament. Some people are of the kind that take what they want. Others aren’t. What do you want, Yani?”

What did she want? She wanted the end of slavery. She wanted to shape her own destiny, since for most of her life, she hadn’t had the choice. And ruling? Yani didn’t consider herself the type, although the temptation quickened her pulse like taking stims. If her former masters could see her at the side of a _queen_ , oh, that would be sweet indeed. Maybe with Kateel, she could do some good through one of the galaxy’s most powerful companies.

They had to put Kateel on the throne first.

“So, what’s the plan?” Yani asked when they all assembled in the hull.

Boba sat at his table, cleaning a blaster, the cleaning kit spread on a towel before him.

Kateel leaned against a wall, graceful even when reclining, poised even though her shoulders were tight with tension. “Does the current Kuat of Kuat have any children?”

“No,” Boba said.

“He is the same one as before I lost my memory?”

“Same one.”

“I know that he has no next of kin, then,” Kateel said with satisfaction. “At least none that meet the requirements to inherit. The next in line is the head of the second most powerful Kuati house—mine—since the person inheriting must be of the highest nobility. There are ten noble houses, and they rule over certain territories on Kuat. By far, the most influential is House Kuat, whose leader runs Kuat Drive Yards and is essentially king of the planet.

“However, the title Kuat of Kuat, and its accompanying responsibilities, will be passed to the head of House Kuhlvult if the current Kuat of Kuat dies heirless or otherwise vacates the throne. The Kuhlvulti head then becomes a member of House Kuat.” Kateel grew smug. “I will reclaim ownership of House Kuhlvult from my sister, and when Kuat of Kuat is gone, I will succeed him.”

“What makes you think your sister is going to welcome you back with open arms?” Boba asked. “She did hire an assassin to kill you.”

“Because Kuat of Kuat plans to take her as a bride; she is the most logical choice, a powerful and beautiful woman. And if she marries him, she loses rulership of our house, becoming a pawn under his heel. She will see that submitting to me as head of House Kuat and remaining head of House Kuhlvult herself is in her best interest.”

“Are we going to kill him?” Yani asked, strangely comfortable with the notion.

“If we kidnapped him and wiped his memory, as was done to me,” Kateel said, “I would have to worry my whole rule about him returning and taking my throne from me. We know that wiped memory can return. So yes, he must die.”

“Have your sister do it,” Boba suggested. “If she’s engaged to Kuat, then—”

“Kuat of Kuat,” Kateel corrected. “Kuat is the name of the planet.”

Boba looked at the ceiling, gritting his teeth, then resumed speaking. “If she’s engaged to Kuat of Kuat, she can get close enough to jab him with a poisoned needle or something. I say she needs to put in a little work in this plan if she wants to keep the rulership of her house.”

“Ah,” Kateel sighed in satisfaction. “I believe you are right. This will be her punishment for attempting to get rid of me. If she succeeds in the murder, she will be forgiven, and if she is caught, we will have lost an expendable player and can try another tactic.” Kateel smiled a feral smile. “Let us pay my dear sister a visit. We have much to catch up on.”


	39. Bed Sharing

Kateel was polite to a fault, accepting the evening meal from Boba graciously and not running her mouth when silence descended on the ship. She did everything with dignity, down to the dainty spoonfuls of soup she drank, though she must’ve been ravenous. Boba wanted to tell her, ‘You can just slurp it up. No one here will judge you.’ But perhaps her over-enunciated show of refinement was an effort to reclaim her identity.

Boba had trouble sketching her character. As he’d told Yani, he was reevaluating his opinion of her after seeing how proudly she still held herself, though she’d been enslaved for over seven years and yellowing bruises mottled her skin. That confidence in her self-worth, or at least the faking of it, deserved respect. Also, she seemed to like Yani, which was a point in her favor. Kateel sat close to Yani when she could and leaned in a little as if seeking comfort; Yani had a comforting presence.

When Kateel retired for the night, leaving Boba and Yani alone, things became awkward. She’d slept in his bed before, but it had been after sex. This—inviting her to just fall asleep with him—was a different kind of intimacy. Boba cleared his throat. “You can use the fresher first.”

Yani nodded and grabbed her things, disappearing behind the sliding door.

Boba fiddled around his room. He flicked off the heat lamp that the plant had been basking in, since it was supposed to be “night” now, and spritzed its leaves with a water bottle. A new leaf was just beginning to unfurl. He added a second pillow to his cot. It sort of overlapped the first since the space was so small, but that was fine.

Yani emerged dressed in a long, loose shirt for sleep (not one of his, alas). She smiled at him.

He took his cue from her. So they were wearing clothes to bed. Boba grabbed a shirt and a clean pair of underwear to change into, then went to use the fresher himself.

Yani was in the cot when he returned, facing the wall. She’d turned down the room’s lamp to the dimmest glow.

Boba eased into bed behind her, slipping under the blanket but careful not to touch her. Had he inconvenienced her by requesting that she give up her bed for their guest, or did she like being here? He wanted her here every night. Maybe if this became a more consistent thing, he would expand the cot to give them more room. It was sized for a single person.

Boba spent several endless moments staring at the back of Yani’s head. Then he cautiously reached an arm out and rested it over her stomach.

Yani sighed and spun over to face him, snuggling into his touch. Her small, soft body pressed against his in gentle ownership, like she knew that he could never have anyone after her.

His fingers dug into the flesh of her back. _Stay with me_ , he thought, because sometimes when he was around her, it was all he could think. _Stay, stay, stay, don’t let me lose you, too. Don’t let me lose you again._

She pulled away enough to look at his face. With a single fingertip, she traced his jaw, his cheek, his brow. Then her eyes widened, startled. “You don’t have eyebrows!”

“The Sarlacc singed them away. You never noticed?”

“I didn’t! I’m just so used to your face, so rugged and handsome.” She explored his face again, giddy.

She thought he was handsome? ‘Rugged,’ he could understand. It might be a polite euphemism for all the scarring. But paired with ‘handsome,’ it felt more like an attractive trait.

One side of her mouth lifted. “Did you notice that I don’t have eyebrows either?”

Boba’s eyes shot to her forehead. “I know I’ve seen you with eyebrows. What…” He didn’t understand what he was seeing. “Where did they go?”

“I draw them on. I guess my makeup skills are pretty good if you couldn’t tell they were fake. Twi’leks don’t have much hair anywhere, just peach fuzz.” She lifted her arm for him to feel. “Yes, that fact is most definitely sexualized. But the perk is that I don’t have to shave.”

Boba slid his hand along her arm, catching tiny, soft hairs barely visible. There was still so much to learn about Yani. He wanted to spend his life learning _everything_.

“I can’t believe you didn’t notice that my eyebrows disappeared after you rescued me. I couldn’t draw them on again until I got a new brow pencil, when we stopped to get me clothes.”

“We match, then,” Boba said. “Just a pair of browless kids making our way through the galaxy.”

“Twi’lek women often paint on eyebrows because of humanocentric beauty standards and whatnot, but the men don’t. I guess what I’m getting at is that you look quite appealing to me this way.”

Boba had never considered that his hairlessness might make him  _ more _ attractive to anyone. He barely knew how to process Yani’s admission. “Sorry that I don’t have lekku,” he teased.

Yani heaved a dramatic sigh. “Well, no one is perfect.” But she couldn’t keep her smile down.

She had to quit it with the smiling. Every time she beamed at him, Boba’s heart swelled too-tight in his chest. When he’d first met her, she had looked at him with a rare hopeful expression; but the way she looked at him _now_ , no one had ever come close to such tenderness.

Yani closed the few inches between them and brushed her lips against his, ever so gently.

Boba shut his eyes and drifted in the peace of her embrace. Whatever happened next, as long as Yani was beside him, it would all turn out all right. His mind wandered to their next trials: the showdowns with Kodir and Kuat. There were so many unknowns, so much that could go wrong. He would do his best to help Kateel, but if it all went to bantha fodder, he would fly Yani to safety and not look back. She was the only piece he couldn’t afford to lose.

Yani settled down on her pillow. “Goodnight, Boba. Sleep well.”

“I’m not sleeping tonight,” he said. “I don’t trust Kateel.”

“Oh! Should we, should we take turns keeping watch?”

Boba brushed down one of her lekku. “You rest. There’s no way I’ll fall asleep with a stranger aboard, anyway.” She felt guilty about this, he could tell, but he kissed her mouth until she melted. “Rest, Yani. I don’t mind spending hours just holding you.”

It was one of the most pleasant sleepless nights he’d ever had. Yani was warm, tucked against his side while he lay on his back, her head pillowed on his arm and her breathing steady.

He thought about the future, how since her arrival, it had always seemed so hazy. He was a man who lived in the moment—one job after another—and his investments for the future mostly came down to hoarded credits and lists of contacts who would give him work. Never had he needed to plan for another person. Never had  _ ethics _ and  _ redemption _ factored into his decision-making, not until Yani. Never had he considered what he might find  _ enjoyable _ when deciding on a next task.

What would he enjoy doing? Try as he might, he couldn’t picture himself in any other setting than the ones he’d inhabited his whole adult life. He was good at what he did, and that was as close to enjoyment as he knew how to conceive of it. Was there a way to continue his work, but do it in a way that would make Yani proud of him? He’d used his skills on Taris to break up spice gangs and brothels, and that had been fulfilling. Was there something like that?

Something on Tatooine? His thoughts always strayed back to that desert, with its weathered denizens wrapped against the sand and the criminal cesspool that ruled every aspect of the planet. There was so much opportunity on Tatooine for a skilled and driven man to carve out a place for himself, especially with Jabba’s death and the accompanying power vacuum only tenuously filled by Bib Fortuna. Boba felt like he  _ belonged _ there. But how would Yani fit in?

It was a question for after they dealt with Kuat. First, they had to survive this coup, and then they could worry about the future.


	40. Kodir of Kuhlvult

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been conceiving of the planet Kuat's culture as like, Ancient Egypt but with technology. I think it's fun how Kuat of Kuat slips easily from traditional garb into coveralls, and he comes from a dynastic lineage that believes in its own eternity, but his empire is... a tech company. 😂 He's like what a Pharaoh would be if Egypt's economy was built on technological innovation, and so the Pharoah was expected to be the smartest, most ingenuitive person. Maybe those aesthetics don't really go together, but that's how I've been picturing it. Kateel looks like Nefertiti.

Why all the ‘K’ names? Boba thought. He’d heard of other influential Kuatis during the Clone Wars: Risi Lenoan, Giddean Danu. But House Kuhlvult had a distinct alliterative trend going.

Whatever. Who was he to criticize?

Boba parked _Jaster’s Legacy_ on a planet a few hours from Kuat and rented a new ship. They didn’t want Kuat of Kuat to track their movements and know they were coming to see Kodir.

They flew past the Orbital Shipyards to Kuat’s surface. The planet was a terraformed oasis of leafy, tropical trees and rippling brooks. Kodir lived in a mansion made of white marble, draped with fluttering, gauzy curtains. At Kateel’s insistence, they landed the rented spacecraft on the mansion’s own landing pad. She descended the ramp first, flanked by Boba and Yani. Kateel led them through the halls at an unwavering pace, eyes forward. The few servants who caught sight of her paled and stepped out of the way.

They arrived at a lush, open-air courtyard in the middle of the mansion. A few robed guards with tall hats and blasters stood around the walls. A fountain flowed into a fishpond in one corner; in another, trays of fruits and delicacies rested on low tables surrounded by cushioned benches. In a center pavilion, lounging on a divan, was a woman who resembled Kateel, but her hair was styled in a bob made of thin braids, and her eyes were rimmed with kohl.

She shot to her feet when Kateel stepped into view, her chest heaving. “ _You._ ”

“Hello, little sister,” Kateel smiled.

Kodir sneered at Boba. “What happened to your hundred-percent success rate?”

Boba shrugged. “Oops.”

Kodir cast around for support, but the guards were looking back and forth between the sisters, shocked and confused.

“You may go,” Kateel told them. “I would speak to my sister alone.”

“No! Stay!” Kodir ordered. But the guards filed out in recognition of Kateel’s authority.

Kateel strode up to Kodir. “I would say that I missed you, but until recently, I didn’t remember you existed.”

“How is this possible?” Kodir whined. “How are you still alive? Why does everything always work out for you? Perfect Kateel, casting a shadow so wide that no one near her can shine. Kateel, who can return from the dead and take back everything I’ve worked for just like that.”

Ooh, drama. Near the doorway, Boba and Yani exchanged looks.

“Quit complaining,” Kateel said. “I haven’t had a luxurious time of it. And you should be grateful that I’m not immediately turning you over to the Council of Houses for trial.”

“Why aren’t you?” Kodir asked, sinking onto the divan.

“Because you have a part to play in the coming events. I will hold no animosity toward you if you do as I say.”

“So I’ll just sit behind you and keep my mouth shut, is that right?” Kodir asked bitterly.

“I want you to continue to rule House Kuhlvult.”

Kodir was shocked. “What?”

Kateel clasped her hands behind her back. “Not immediately. I am going to take back our house for now. But once we have killed Kuat of Kuat, I will inherit the throne, and then you will be head of House Kuhlvult again.”

Kodir gaped, open-mouthed.

“Forgive me, I misspoke. _You_ will kill Kuat of Kuat to give me plausible deniability.”

“Why in the known universe would I do that?”

“For one thing, I can have you locked up for hiring an assassin to kill me. For another, this way, you get to remain in a position of power over our ancestral home. Think of what will happen if you betray me to Kuat of Kuat. He plans to take you as his wife, yes?”

Kodir nodded. “And I’ll be a queen.”

“You’ll be an ornament with a fine title and a pretty face. He’ll get a few children out of you and then kill you when you are no longer useful.”

Several expressions flashed across Kodir’s face until at last she hung her head. “I know,” she whispered. Her hands trembled.

Kateel looked into the distance. “I knew I was destined to be Kuat of Kuat’s wife from a young age. I studied the workings of Kuat Drive Yards in preparation, learned all I could about the company, our allies, and our enemies. But as we all grew, it became obvious that Kuat of Kuat was not looking for a _partner_. He is barely interested in women. But I would be a better ruler than him. While he locks himself in his chambers and studies spy equipment, I have been out in the galaxy and seen its worst firsthand. I have ideas for reform that will improve the company. While he worships the past, I look to our future.”

Kateel grabbed Kodir’s chin, lifting it and forcing her to meet Kateel’s steely gaze. “If you do not agree to help me,” Kateel said, “I will enter marriage negotiations with Kuat of Kuat anyway and sell you off like a prize piece of breeding stock. For the rest of your brief life, when your mouth isn’t stuffed with his cock, it will be closed, as befits a good little ornamental plaything. Understand?”

Damn, Boba thought. Kateel was intense. He recalled why he’d found her alluring all those years ago, why he couldn’t bring himself to snuff out that fire. His attraction had been nothing to what he now felt for Yani—more of a grudging respect for another ruthless creature—and though the attraction was gone, the respect remained.

Kodir stared down her sister. Then her shoulders drooped. “What would you have me do?”

Kateel released her chin and gestured for Boba and Yani to approach. “Let us discuss the plan.”


	41. Women

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys were horny for Kateel, so here’s some Yani/Kateel action. It wasn’t in the original plan for the story, so you can skip it if you’d like and the plot will remain unaffected.

Yani had never slept in such a luxurious bed. She and Boba had been given their own rooms in the mansion (‘palace’ might have been a better word—it was certainly grand enough). Her room was open and airy, the ceiling supported by curving marble pillars, and translucent swathes of white cloth draped over windows, in doorways, and around the bed. From the ceiling hung baubles of metal and glass that housed lights. She could raise or dim their luminance from a knob on the bedside table. Right now, they were turned low for sleep, the light soft.

Kateel had given Yani new clothes, too, robes and dresses of a flowing style. The nightgown that Yani currently wore had a loose bodice and draping sleeves that gathered to cuffs at the wrist.

Yani pulled back the covers, ready to crawl onto the circular mattress and sink into the cushions, but a knock at the door halted her. She slid open the door enough to peek outside, thinking maybe Boba had come to say goodnight, but Kateel, not Boba, stood in the hall.

“Might I come in?” Kateel asked.

What could the other woman want? If she wanted to discuss the particulars of their plot against Kuat, she should’ve gone to Boba. He was the one who had a part to play; Yani was just along for the ride. “Please do,” Yani said, opening the door fully and stepping aside. She felt underdressed in her nightgown, but Kateel should have expected that Yani would be preparing for sleep.

Kateel strode slowly into the room. “Forgive my intrusion at so late an hour.”

“It’s all right.” Yani closed the door.

“Do you like your quarters?”

Was that a trick question? “They’re worlds nicer than any place I’ve ever stayed.”

Kateel nodded and faced her, poised and regal. “I’m afraid that space on the Orbital Shipyards is more limited than on the surface, but the accommodations are still stately. You could stay there with me once I take over House Kuat.”

There it was again: that offer to rule at Kateel’s side that Yani couldn’t immediately turn down. She knew nothing about Kuat Drive Yards, but if Kateel didn’t think that would be an issue… But how would Boba feel? Could her relationship with him continue if she accepted Kateel’s offer? She loved him so much, and she couldn’t bear breaking up with him again.

“You need not answer right away,” Kateel said in response to Yani’s silence. “I didn’t visit just to pester you into joining me.”

“Why did you visit?”

Something in the air changed, sharpened, as Kateel met Yani’s eyes and didn’t look away. “I spent years performing for disgusting men. I think it would be… healing… to be with a woman who understands.”

Yani inhaled, overwhelmed by the vulnerability Kateel displayed by asking her, by revealing that she hadn’t escaped slavery unscathed. Yani recalled Marco’s offer to her back on Corellia—he would give her a safe space to explore having sex again if that would help mend a wound. Maybe she could do that for Kateel. “Thank you for trusting me with this,” Yani said. “And I’m more than willing to do whatever you’d like to help you reclaim your sexuality, or just provide some comfort. But, I am in a relationship with Boba, and I need to check that he’s okay with this.”

Kateel jerked her head. “That is to be expected.”

“Just stay here a moment. I’ll be right back.” Yani hated to leave her alone, so she resolved to be quick. She dashed into the fresher with Boba’s comlink and called him. At his answer, she explained the situation in brief, clipped sentences then asked if he didn’t mind her sleeping with Kateel, just for tonight.

“No, no I don’t mind,” he said. “She isn’t forcing you, right? I know she can be pretty intimidating.”

“She’s not forcing me.”

“All right, then.”

Yani switched off the comm, glanced at her appearance in the mirror (good enough), and reemerged into her room to find Kateel standing in the same spot. She smiled to try and put the other woman at ease. “He’s okay with it.”

Kateel rubbed her wrist, conveying some awkwardness. “Good, good.”

Yani approached slowly, giving her time to move away. She was shorter than Kateel (she was shorter than most people), and close up, their height difference made Yani’s stomach flutter. “Just tell me what you want. And know that we can take a break any time.”

Kateel fingered the neckline of Yani’s nightgown. She stepped around Yani and undid the button at her neck. Now it hung loose on her frame and would fall with just a shake of her shoulders. Kateel wound the fabric near the button around her fingers, holding the gown up, and kissed Yani’s neck.

Yani shuddered and closed her eyes at the warm pressure. She tilted her head to give Kateel more room. Should she speak? Talk Kateel through it? “The other slaves and I took comfort in each other. Did you lay with the girls at the palace?”

Kateel lifted her lips enough to speak. “No. I didn’t want to get close to them. They had short life expectancies.”

So on top of being an amnesiac slave, Kateel had been _friendless_. Yani’s heart burned for her. “I’m glad you felt safe to come to me,” Yani said in as gentle a voice as she could muster.

“Mmm. You feel like safety.” She released the gown, and it fluttered off Yani’s shoulders, hanging from the cuffs at her wrists. “You saved me. I know that Fett would not have returned without your intervention.”

Yani pulled the fabric over her hands and let it drop completely to the ground. She only wore underwear, now. Boba would’ve gone back for Kateel whether Yani came with him or not, but looking back further, he wouldn’t have regretted putting Kateel in slavery if not for Yani. So in a way, it was true.

“Shall we move to the bed?”

Yani pulled her over by the hand, realizing all at once that she was going to sleep with a _queen_ , getting breathless with anticipation. Well, Kateel wasn’t a queen yet, but she soon would be.

Kateel laid on the mattress, on a spot free of covers, and pulled Yani down next to her. She shrugged off her outer robe then guided Yani’s hand to the fastening of her dress. She watched Yani undo the line of clasps, eyes roving her body. “You are so beautiful.”

Yani had heard that line a thousand times, and yet it felt different coming from Boba, different coming from Kateel. The way they desired her was unlike the way men paying for her did, though she couldn’t enumerate the reasons why. “So are you,” Yani said as she eased the dress off Kateel.

Kateel was exquisite. She was older than Yani, maybe a few years younger than Boba. Creases nestled in the corner of her eyes; her skin stretched thin across her bones in some areas, and other spots sported mottled, yellowing bruises. Yet her stately elegance was undeniable.

Yani cupped one of Kateel’s breasts, circling her thumb over the skin. “Is this all right?”

Kateel relaxed into her touch. “Yes.” She stroked Yani’s arm, then leaned in for a kiss. Her lips were warm and firm and delightful. Kateel cupped the back of Yani’s head under one lek, holding her in place.

Yani shimmied out of her underwear while keeping her mouth locked with Kateel’s. Then she helped Kateel out of hers, and Yani brushed a finger along Kateel’s slit. She was wet already.

Kateel moaned and situated herself on top of Yani, kneeling over one leg to rub her sex against Yani’s. “Do you know what a relief it is to fuck someone without having to worry about an unwanted pregnancy? I have the implant, but no matter how many precautions I take, there’s always a lingering fear.”

Yani understood. She guided Kateel’s hips and ground up into her. “I do. And there are so many men, so many strangers, you know that there’s a frog’s chance in a vacuum that you’d ever find the father again.” It was terrifying to think that men could have children they weren’t even aware of.

Kateel hummed agreement. The slick rubbing of their clits together was pure pleasure, but Kateel sat back and brushed her hands along Yani’s skin. “Do you mind if I take control a little more?”

Whatever she needed. And Yani wouldn’t object to Kateel using her however she wanted. “Please.”

Kateel laid on her side again, one leg still between Yani’s, and pulled Yani close. “I want you to get off on my thigh. Can you do that for me?”

Yani whimpered and ground down against Kateel’s leg. Warmth settled in her lower belly, an insistent need that blossomed the more Kateel touched her.

“So soft,” Kateel said, in raptures as she traced Yani’s curves. “How are you this perfect, this lovely?” She leaned down to nuzzle her face in Yani’s neck, her breath warm on Yani’s skin. “That’s it, sweet girl,” she crooned. With firm but gentle hands, she cupped Yani’s ass to urge her forward. “That’s it.”

It was so easy, with a woman, so comfortable and safe that Yani’s inhibitions vanished. The friction built to the point of no return, and Yani let out a broken whine as she came on Kateel’s thigh. Her lekku twitched. She shivered in the aftershocks as Kateel stroked her back, whispering nonsense about how good she’d been, how pretty she looked coming undone.

Yani wanted Kateel to feel good, too. Yani rolled on top of her to a small “Oh!” of surprise and kissed her way down Kateel’s throat. She sucked on Kateel’s breasts one after the other, widening her mouth and swirling her tongue around until she heard Kateel’s sigh of pleasure. She double-checked that her nails were short before sliding a finger inside Kateel, then another.

Kateel’s body was beautifully responsive, arching to meet Yani’s hand.

Yani dragged her fingers through Kateel’s cunt, curling them at the end of each thrust until Kateel’s self-composure shattered; her mouth opened and eyes fluttered shut. Then Yani dipped her face to flatten her tongue on Kateel’s clit, and she came with a cry of ecstasy. Yani licked a little longer, letting Kateel settle down.

When Yani looked up, she saw silent tears sliding down Kateel’s cheeks. “Are you all right?” she asked, rushing to comfort her.

Kateel tugged Yani down on top of her so that her head rested at the crook of Kateel’s neck. Yani couldn’t see Kateel’s face as she cried, but she could feel the rise and fall of her chest, the way it hitched slightly. “Yes, sweet girl,” Kateel said. “Thanks to you.”


	42. Plans

Yani met up with Boba when they all congregated in a meeting room the next morning: Kateel, Kodir, Boba, and Yani.

“How was last night?” Boba asked her, teasing.

So he wouldn’t hold her night with Kateel against her. Yani breathed a sigh of relief and nudged Boba playfully. She didn’t answer his question, but she did joke, “Now we’ve both slept with Kuati nobility.”

Kateel looked up from the central table with a holomap of the Orbital Shipyards, whose edges she was gripping. “Fett? Who did you sleep with?”

Oops, Yani thought.

Boba somehow conveyed a friendly glare at Yani through the helmet. Then he faced Kateel with a hand resting on his belt. He shuffled from one foot to the other. “Kuat of Kuat,” he admitted.

“You _idiot_ ,” Kateel said.

Kodir looked back and forth between them with barely-suppressed glee.

“I know, I know,” Boba said. “It was a mistake, all right?”

“Do I need to worry about a conflict of interest?” Kateel asked, staring him down with molten eyes.

“No,” Boba said with force. “I’m on your side. Even if I didn’t have a debt to repay to you, Kuat crossed a line when he targeted Yani.”

“Kuat of Kuat,” Kodir corrected.

Boba huffed in exasperation. “You all  _ know _ who I’m talking about!”

“It is not just a name, though. It’s a title,” Kodir explained, even as Kateel said, “He hurt Yani?”

The concern in Kateel’s voice made Yani blush. “He was trying to separate Boba and me.” And it had worked, until Boba had proven his desire to be a better person.

Kateel studied her for several long moments, tapping her nails on the table. Then she said, “You will be avenged. Now,” she addressed the room, “Let us go over escape routes.”

“I want my ship there in case everything goes to Sithspit,” Boba said.

“Your ship. That you already disclosed that Kuat of Kuat can track.” Kateel didn’t sound impressed. “You would broadcast our presence to him.”

“I know its weapons and flight systems better than any other spacecraft, and that’s the ship I want to be in if I need to ferry Yani to safety.”

He might have name-dropped her on purpose; Kateel clearly had a soft spot for her.

“Fine,” Kateel sighed. “You may leave it in space nearby and call it down when it comes time to leave.”

“Thank you.”

Yani was so unimportant to the plan, so insignificant on a galactic scale (she wasn’t a future queen like Kateel or the galaxy’s best-known bounty hunter like Boba), and yet they were altering the plan specifically to accommodate her safety. Maybe she shouldn’t even go with them.

The group discussed other details of the coup, plans and backup plans, not even breaking for lunch. Food was brought in, and they ate while talking. Boba scarfed down his meal and put his helmet back on immediately after.

They talked until Kateel and Boba were both satisfied with the details.

“We don’t know how many allies I have in the Shipyards,” Kateel said. “We might rally support, and we might be on our own. Hopefully, Kodir’s initial assassination attempt will go off without a hitch, but we must be prepared for anything.”

Hours later, Boba and Yani left the sisters alone to talk. They wandered back to Boba’s room, which wasn’t as nice as Yani’s but not plain enough to be insulting. Yani bounced on the bed’s edge, thoughts heavy. “Do you think this will work?”

“He won’t get away from me. I promise.”

And what then? What happened next for them, after Kateel was on the throne and she and Boba ran out of side quests? Yani was supposed to make the next decision and retain control over her life, but she was unsure what she wanted.

Boba set his helmet aside and knelt between Yani’s legs, resting his forehead on her stomach. He rubbed circles on her thigh with his thumb. “I missed having you in my bed last night. I’m getting used to it.”

Yani stroked the top of his head, trying to provide whatever comfort he was seeking. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

“I’d like that. If you don’t think it will offend her Highness.”

“I don’t think so.” Kateel knew that Yani and Boba were together, that one night with Kateel wouldn’t erase the love she had for him. “It’s still afternoon. Do you want to just cuddle for a bit?”

Boba nodded against her stomach, then stripped off the rest of the armor and climbed into bed with her. Mindful of his bulk, he gently settled half on top of her, with his head on her shoulder and one leg thrown across hers.

He was getting so physical with his affection, in contrast to how he’d barely touched her when they met, and Yani loved it. She relished the comforting weight of him and rubbed his back, massaging a little around the shoulders and neck.

“Kateel will never trust me,” Boba said into her neck. “Very, very understandably. But neither will the Bounty Hunter’s Guild or the New Republic, and the criminals I used to work with never trusted me in the first place. It’s hard to start over when the whole galaxy knows and fears your name.”

“I’m sorry,” Yani said.

“But you,” Boba wiggled his fingers against her side in a light tickle, making her squirm and smile, “pick up allies like space-rats on ships. People see the good in you.” His voice fell. “And maybe you see good in people who don’t deserve it. You’re the only one who… who believes I can be different. Whatever you want to do next, please let me stay with you.”

“I don’t have a plan,” she confessed. “But I want you there, no matter what happens. I do think there is good in you, Boba, but it’s not a mysterious light in the core of your soul, it’s something you—and everyone else—have to work for. If you don’t feel redeemed yet, it’s because one good deed doesn’t undo a lifetime of immorality. You’re not going to win everyone’s trust back, so don’t go hoping for it. You’ve caused harm that can’t be undone.” She thought of Kateel’s tears last night. “But you can move forward and keep doing good. I’m staying with you not because I believe that you’ve fixed every problem you caused, but because you’re committed to living differently.”

Boba held her tighter. “Thank you. I needed to hear that. Knock me over the head if you ever catch me straying back to old habits.”

“You know I will.”


	43. Coup

Boba led Kateel and Yani to their rendezvous point with Kodir in a spare room of the Orbital Shipyards. So far, no one seemed alerted to their presence; no sirens blared, no guards stormed through the halls. All three of them had blasters, but Boba was the only one with his gun raised. He would look like an armed escort for the ladies upon casual glance.

If everything went according to plan, Kodir would be with Kuat that very moment. She’d request a private audience with her intended then stab him with a poisoned needle. In the ensuing chaos following his death, Kateel would insert herself as the new Kuat of Kuat. Boba hoped the murder would go off that smoothly—their back-up plans involved more moving pieces than he’d like—but he doubted it would. Kodir wasn’t a trained killer.

Boba should’ve volunteered to do the actual murder bit, but secretly, he still worried that he would hesitate once he and Kuat were alone, face to face. Kuat was a piece of Boba’s past that he couldn’t let go of.

Only thirty seconds or so after they filed into the spare room, Kodir joined them, panting. “I couldn’t do it,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. We talked about nothing for five minutes, and then I just froze up.”

That was a claw in the gears, but again, Boba had expected it. Not everyone was cut out for cold-blooded killing. Hiring an assassin was planets away from injecting poison into a breathing person oneself. “Did you swipe the detonator, at least?” Boba asked. The button was the heart of Plan B. And Plan C? Plan C was just for Boba to find Kuat and shoot the fucker in the head. Kateel could pardon him later.

Kodir pulled out a sphere of clear plastoid that hinged open to reveal a dull red button. “It was in his coat pocket. I don’t think he noticed me take it.”

“At least you accomplished that,” Kateel said. “Boba, you can rewire it?”

“I told you I could,” Boba growled, kneeling to the floor and unrolling a kit of tools. He took the button from Kodir and set down a denton explosive—the bomb he was going to recode Kuat’s detonator to activate.

“Just try not to blow us all up,” Kateel said, standing guard by the closed door.

Boba would do his very best, because Yani was right next to him and he preferred her alive. He unscrewed the button and examined the wiring inside, maneuvering it with a thin glass tool that wouldn’t conduct an accidental charge. He thought he could see which pathway to clip—

The door slid open, revealing the head of security himself, the man Boba had met on that first trip to visit Kuat. Everyone froze, staring at one another, careful not to make any sudden movements. The head of security wouldn’t know precisely what was going on, but he could easily guess.

Boba’s gun lay next to him; it would take half a second to grab.

“Fenald,” Kateel said, voice even.

“I thought I saw someone sneaking in here.” Fenald’s eyes flickered around the scene, his own blaster raised. “Thought you were dead, Kuhlvult.”

“As did others,” Kateel replied.

Fenald’s gaze alighted on Boba, and his eyes widened in recognition. “That’s the Technician’s button. You’re deactivating it.”

“That was the plan,” Boba said, unsure where this was going but glad that neither side had started shooting yet. Fenald would be facing them four to one, but even if he didn’t escape alive, blaster fire would bring attention down on them.

Fenald’s ribs expanded and contracted. “Did you know that I helped plant those bombs all around the Shipyards at his request?” He asked it more like a confession than an inquiry. “With one press of a button, he would destroy _everything_. Debris would rain down on the planet’s surface, killing untold others. And he’s growing more paranoid, spending time alone.” Slowly, Fenald lowered his blaster. “I’ll keep guards away from the throne room.”

Seriously? This was a better ally than any of them had expected. “And the hangar,” Boba added.

“And the hangar.” Fenald backed away, and the door closed.

The silence was thick with worry. “Can we trust him?” Yani asked.

“He’s an honorable man,” Kateel said. “I believe so.” But she was still concerned. Who wouldn’t be?

Boba could only return to his work and wish there were a god of staging insurrections to pray to. When he finished fiddling with the button, and had closed the plastoid sphere to everyone’s relief, he gave a rundown of their next moves. “I’m going to call my ship to the hanger. Kateel, Kodir, get this back in Kuat of Kuat’s pocket without him noticing, and then send him my way somehow. He might be alerted to the ship’s proximity and be on his way already.”

Kodir took the button back. She had the best chance of slipping near him again.

Boba and Yani parted ways with the sisters, heading for the hangar bay. The halls were eerily quiet. Maybe that Fenald character really was on their side.

In the hangar, Boba moved quickly, hiding the denton bomb in the nearest escape pod. Then his ship landed, and he directed Yani behind a pillar that would block stray blaster fire but that was near enough to the ship for her to dash to it.

There came the sounds of a scuffle in the hallway, a cry of pain, and then Kuat stumbled, seething, into the hangar. In his hand was the long, pointed, needle-like knife, and it dripped blood onto the metal floor. “You,” he said upon catching sight of Boba. “You’re behind this.” His face twisted with rage.

Kuat appeared so different from the refined aristocrat of before. His hat was crooked, his tall form hunched over and quivering with rage.

“Where are my guards?” he demanded. “What have you done with them?”

Who had been stabbed? Were the women all right? Boba would just have to end this battle with Kuat quickly so that he could go check up on whoever had met the business end of Kuat’s pretty knife.

Kuat charged him, and Boba stepped neatly to the side, avoiding the spike.

He had choices now. It was clearly his turn to deal with Kuat, and Boba _had_ to kill him, that was the plan. But even now, memories crept through his mind: chuckling to himself as he rewrote insidious code that had Kuat’s claw marks all over it; catching one of Kuat’s little spy droids on Circumtore and moving it to the Shell Hutts’ back room, where the most secret deals were struck; Kuat purring, “ _I want you just like this, until eternity runs out_.” Boba could still choose to spare him.

Sure, Kuat had done terrible things, but were they any worse than what Boba had done? If he deserved redemption, didn’t Kuat? “You’ve lost,” Boba said. “No one is coming to help you, and you’re no match for me in a physical fight. Just surrender now, and we can work something out.” Kateel would be furious, but he could deal with her later. Maybe they could put Kuat in hiding and pretend he was dead.

Kuat snarled. “Never.”

“Please. Kateel isn’t an outsider. She loves this company as much as you, and she’ll take good care of it.” Boba didn’t offer second chances to quarry, but this was Kuat. They understood and respected one another; Kuat was smart enough to know when he was beaten, right? _Take the deal, or you’re dead. Come on. Don’t make me kill you._ “You can still live. It will be a different life than you’re used to, but that’s okay.” Could Kuat become a better man if he were removed from his position of power, given a chance to start over?

Kuat charged him again in a mad rush, aiming at Boba’s neck.

Boba ducked and jabbed his elbow into Kuat’s side. Fine. Kuat had made his choice. If he didn’t want to start over, didn’t even want to try, then it didn’t matter that he might have been redeemed. That was the difference between them; though they’d both made horrendous mistakes, Boba was _trying_ to be a better person.

Boba wasn’t going to mend every wound he’d caused. He wasn’t going to shake hands with every person he’d hurt and be forgiven. Barmaids might try to rescue Yani at every restaurant they visited, and creatures would flinch from his helmet in every sector; Boba would suffer the consequences of his actions the rest of his life. But there were so many choices left for him to make.

It was time for Kuat to face some consequences.

Boba slammed Kuat into the side of _Jaster’s Legacy_ and held him there by the throat. He grappled the spike from his hand and examined it. It was a pretty pathetic weapon, actually, due to that long, thin shape. You’d have to stab someone in _exactly_ the right spot to kill them. But it was made of a tough material—not as strong as beskar, but perhaps enough to punch through durasteel.

Boba ignored Kuat clawing at Boba’s grip around his throat and jabbed the spike down hard.

At the motion, Kuat recoiled, and then he realized that Boba wasn’t aiming at him but the ship’s siding next to him. Boba stabbed the same spot again, puncturing a hole. Kuat’s eyes went wide enough to see the whites under his irises as he realized that they stood next to the panel Kuat had sabotaged. “You didn’t replace it,” he choked.

“Nope,” Boba said. In concealing an airborne toxin between layers of siding, Kuat had unintentionally handed Boba a weapon; airborne toxins didn’t affect Boba. So whatever fate Kuat had planned for Boba would now be inflicted on him. Boba stabbed once more, and air hissed out of the breach. Boba held Kuat in place, held him as he struggled, until Kuat couldn’t hold his breath any longer and inhaled the noxious chemicals. His eyes closed and his body went limp.

“Is he dead?” Yani asked, peeking out from behind her pillar.

Boba put a finger to Kuat’s pulse point. “Unconscious.” He hefted Kuat over his shoulder. “Stay away from that breach.” Boba carried Kuat to the escape pod that he’d hidden the bomb in, checked that the detonator was in Kuat’s robe, and shut him inside.

Kuat stirred soon after, and Boba hit the eject button immediately. Kuat rushed to press his face to the transparisteel, glaring at Boba and pounding his fist on the door, but he was trapped, heading off into space.

_Escape_ , Boba thought. _Come on, make a choice._ But Boba knew Kuat wouldn’t take this opportunity to run. He could never bear to see another soul on his throne.

Their eyes stayed locked through the windows, one last silent moment of connection, before Kuat reached into his pocket.

And the escape pod, not the Shipyards, blew up.


	44. Into the Future

Kuat was gone. Yani watched Boba eject him into space and stare after the escape pod, keep staring even as the explosion of light faded to nothing. “Boba,” Yani said, breaking him out of the trance.

“He died the way he wanted to,” Boba said. “Up in flames in defence of his dynasty.”

Yani didn’t know how to respond, what to say to comfort him, so she went to check on the hallway Kuat had emerged from.

Kateel was slumped against the wall, alert, but pressing a hand to her stomach. Kodir knelt next to her. Yani helped bandage Kateel up and bring her to a medic. Kuat had stabbed her, but thankfully the medic said the wound wasn’t serious.

Yani and Boba spent a tense night in bed together on _Jaster’s Legacy_ , orbiting around the planet. In a quiet way, Boba was grieving. He didn’t cry, but his breath shuddered against her neck as he held her.

“Is this wrong?” he asked. “Mourning him.”

Kuat had been evil. Yani recalled with searing clarity the strain in her chest, the feeling of being suffocated, as Kuat laid Boba’s faults bare in a way that would evoke her past. But he had been someone else to Boba. A friend, maybe, albeit a weird one. A lover. “No,” Yani said. “It’s not wrong.”

The next day, they lingered at the side of Kuat’s audience chamber as Kateel addressed the prominent members of the company for the first time. She stood in front of the throne, wearing green coveralls, thick work boots, and a stiff cloth crown in a cylindrical shape, wider at the top than the base. If she was still in pain from her wound, she didn’t show it.

“Kuat of Kuat is dead,” Kateel said.

“Long live Kuat of Kuat,” the room chanted.

“It is with both a heavy heart and newfound hope that I take his place. I grieve the loss of a driven, resourceful leader, but with his death comes an opportunity to bring Kuat Drive Yards into the future. We would not have lasted five more years. The New Republic would have forcibly taken this company over. I believe that the former Kuat of Kuat could sense this end creeping closer, though he didn’t know how to stave it off.”

Kateel, Kuat of Kuat now, clasped her arms behind her back, as poised and regal as she had been when they’d found her in Jabba’s Palace. “Outsiders have short memories,” she continued. They do not see a great dynasty when they look at us—a legacy older than any of their governments. They do not remember that we built ships for the Old Republic; they only see the company that armed the Empire. So we are going to improve our image to convince them we are turning over a new leaf, beginning with an overhaul of our suppliers, dropping any that will not conform to new slavery reporting mandates.”

The audience rippled like grass as they exchanged looks and whispers.

This was a hard road Kuat of Kuat was choosing for herself, but Yani believed she could pull this off. If anyone could save the company, it was her.

“I will take a tour of the Shipyards, now,” Kuat of Kuat said, stepping forward.

“Right away, my lady,” said Fenald, moving into place beside her.

“Technician,” she corrected.

Fenald raised his chin, and his eyes softened in proud recognition. “Technician.”

Hours later, the new Kuat of Kuat summoned Yani and Boba to the audience chamber. They found her kneeling on the ground, trying to coax the late ruler’s felinx out from under the couch. She was so different from the imposing commander she’d been that morning.

“Cat trouble?” Boba asked.

Kuat straightened, batting dust from her knees. “I will win her over eventually, but it may take time. Now, I believe thanks are in order.”

“I did a terrible thing to you,” Boba said.

“And now you have paid me back with a great thing. You might have saved the lives of everyone aboard the Shipyards, too. So you have my gratitude.”

Boba nodded.

“I do have one more job for you. This is not a favor. I’ll pay you. In addition to an initial sum of credits, you may always land your ship here for free repairs.”

“That is generous,” Boba said. “What’s the job?”

“I want you to free every girl in Jabba’s Palace.”

Yani’s lower lip trembled. Kuat remembered—of course she remembered where she’d been the last however many years, knew what went on there. And now she was trying to help the women who’d been left behind when she was saved. Yani would have begged Boba to accept this job, but she didn’t need to.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“And Yani,” Kuat said, “I’ll ask once more for you to stay with me, but I will take no offence if you refuse.”

Boba watched her, tension evident in every line of his body, but he didn’t try to argue or convince her. He wouldn’t pressure her one way or another.

Yani had a choice. This was what it meant to be in charge of her destiny: she got to choose where to go from here. And though leaving Boba to rule with Kuat seemed like the brave thing, an adventure into the unknown, Yani realized that having the option to leave strengthened her relationship with Boba. Staying with him now wasn’t a lack of agency; it was a valid, informed choice from multiple options. “Thank you for the offer,” Yani said, “but I’d like to go with Boba.”

“As you wish. It was lovely to know you for a short while, and I hope we can stay in touch.”

They bowed to Kuat, and then Boba took her hand and walked with her out of the room, back to the hangar where their ship lay in wait. “To Tatooine, then?” Yani asked, at peace with the decision she’d made.

“To Tatooine.”


	45. Free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please keep leaving your wonderful comments, guys. I know that every author says this, but they really do make me grin ear to ear and encourage me to keep writing!

Sand crunched under Yani’s feet as she and Boba climbed a dune. The sand gave way a little with each step, forcing her to work harder for every footfall. The desert was rough, unforgiving. The first of the twin suns teased the horizon with gold, though stars still winked in an inky sky.

Boba spoke with a voice as gritty as the sand, as if he were a creature of this terrain. “We’re here.”

Yani crested the ridge and stopped at his side, looking down into the Pit of Carkoon. Something about the word ‘pit’ implied a vast loneliness. Somewhere in that dark hole lurked a Sarlacc, or the body of one. Yani had never pried the full story out of Boba—whether or not Boba had killed the creature as he escaped was a mystery.

Yani had tried not to smile too much when Boba announced that he wanted to pay this spot a visit on their way to the palace. She’d been proud of him for seeking out closure.

Now they faced it together. “It was dark,” Boba said, staring at the pit. “I was suspended in pitch blackness, and moving was difficult, and everything hurt. I think I was screaming. It took a while to realize I wasn’t dead.”

Yani touched his arm, slid her fingers down, and interlaced his hand with hers.

“They say the Sarlacc takes a thousand years to digest its prey. The way time dragged on in there, I could believe it. I thought I would be alive to feel every second of torment for the next millennium. My beskar was protecting me, prolonging my life, keeping me from being crushed, at least. And maybe staving off the worst of the acid too, though some clearly crept under.” He gestured to his helmet, which Yani knew covered rippling scars. “I don’t know how long I was down there. It was endless. I thought that whatever came after this life couldn’t possibly be worse, so I tried to kill myself. The Sarlacc was unkillable, and no one had ever escaped, so death felt like the only option. But I was working blind while being crushed on all sides, barely able to wiggle my arms around. I couldn’t get my knife out of the holster. I finally reached my blaster, tried to aim under my chin, but I fucking _missed_.” Boba’s voice cracked. “I missed, and hit some soft spot on the Sarlacc, and it spit out the little bug that stung it.”

Gods. Yani couldn’t imagine… Well, she  _ could _ imagine the picture Boba had drawn, and she hated it with a burning, twisting ache. She hated that Boba had undergone such a thing. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Not your fault.”

“I know, but I don’t know how else to offer comfort.”

Boba turned away from the pit to face her. “You do it just by being here. I don’t have to be alone.”

Yani didn’t mind the helmet anymore. She knew exactly where Boba’s eyes were, how the skin around them would tighten with worry and soften when he met her gaze. “I’m here,” she said, meaning so much more, but the more was difficult to put into words, so she just squeezed his hand and repeated herself. “I’m here.”

Boba cast one last look at the pit, deep in shadow as the morning suns flooded the sands with unidirectional light. “Let’s go,” he said.

—

“Go, go,” Yani urged, ushering the women into the hall. “If you come across any other slaves, grab them and bring them with you.”

Boba was several floors up, collecting the girls from Fortuna’s throne room and sending them Yani’s way. Yani was in the barracks, directing traffic toward the cave passage she and Boba had used to infiltrate the castle for the second time. Girls of all ages rushed past, helping one another along. Some radiated fear; others had steely hope and determination. Yani counted two dozen.

A Trandoshan with snarling reptilian lips ran into the hallway and singled out Yani as the leader of this breakout, pointing a blaster at her chest.

She shot him first.

“Thank you,” a girl in a draped bikini gasped, pausing in front of Yani.

“Just keep moving.” Yani gave her a squeeze and sent her on her way. “There’s a ship right at the exit. Board it and wait for us. We’ll get you to safety.”

When the hall was quiet, and Yani had poked her head in all the nearby rooms, she climbed stairs in search of Boba. She kept her blaster at the ready, but some of Bib Fortuna’s scum had fled at the start of the raid, and the rest would have focused on Boba. The palace wasn’t as well-manned as it had been during Jabba’s day.

The throne room had been a scene of chaos just minutes ago. A few bodies soiled the floor, leaking blood. Footprints scuffed the ground, leading toward the stairs. Most shockingly, Bib Fortuna himself was crumpled at the foot of his throne, very much resembling a dead body.

Boba stood at the center of the chamber, facing the empty throne.

“What happened?” Yani asked.

“Fortuna didn’t like his playthings being taken from him,” Boba said. “I gave him a chance to let us go peacefully.” He took a step forward, eyes glued to the throne like he was trying to sear a hole through it with his gaze.

Yani got a sour taste in her mouth watching him. She hated this place, hated the way it made men behave. “Boba? It’s time to go.”

“Did you know that I used to fantasize about taking over this operation?” His voice had the low cadence of a dream. “I think everyone did at one point or another.”

“And did this fantasy include vindictive punishments for your enemies? And concubines and dancing girls to entertain you?”

“Yes.”

Well. At least he hadn’t lied. Yani’s finger twitched over the trigger of her blaster as she watched Boba advance, step onto the dais, and drag a gloved hand over the chair’s armrest. _You’ve changed_ , she screamed in her mind. _You’ve changed. You have! Please, please, stay changed._

“And now there’s an empty throne,” he said.

“Are you going to take it?” Yani asked, slow and deliberate. She believed that Boba wasn’t a monster anymore, but the temptation of this place might be too much for even the strongest will.

“No.” Boba finally looked up at her, breaking his gaze from the throne. “You should.”

Her finger dropped off the trigger, and she couldn’t help the shock on her face as the tension in the room rearranged. “What?”

“You should take it.” He stepped off the dais so they were on equal ground. “I don’t trust myself with that kind of power. And you would be a better leader than I would. You’ve been in the dirt with the lowest of the low. The people of Tatooine could use a ruler who can sympathize with them. The person on that throne,” Boba pointed back to it, “controls water supplies and trade routes all across the planet.”

Yani couldn’t comprehend this. “You want me to run a crime syndicate?”

“I’ve worked with the operation for years. I know how the gears fit together, and I can guide you through it.” He was excited, animated. “Think of all the good you can do.”

Yani shook her head. “Think of all the harm. This palace runs on fear. I don’t want to break the bones of people who fail to pay up on time. I’m not that kind of person.”

“Luckily, you’re dating a thug who can crack some kneecaps for you.”

Yani glared at him until he held up his hands.

“All right, all right. It’s going to be harder to keep a firm grip on your position without leaving some bruises, but it’s doable. Especially if you have me standing behind you to give your rule credibility. I’m a known face around these parts. Um, known helmet.”

This was insane. “I don’t want to be a spice dealer! I don’t want to oppress the people of Tatooine in a slightly nicer way than another being might oppress them.”

“You don’t have to. We can work out a plan to free the planet’s slaves once your position is cemented. All of them, not just the girls in the palace. Your influence would be enormous if you took over the syndicate. You’ll have to fight for your position, especially if you’re going to make sweeping changes, but imagine having all the ex-slaves of Tatooine behind you.

“And yes, you’d have to start off with the established commerce that Jabba and Fortuna dealt in: spice, weapons shipments, gambling rings. But you could make use of those established trade routes and ease into legal markets. In the meantime, you can be reworking the water and protection deals that kept the poor in poverty.”

Could it work? Could Yani really alter the economics of Tatooine so drastically? Could she rearrange the power structures of the entire planet to protect the most vulnerable citizens?

Boba kept trying to convince her, his tone forceful and compelling. “You have an alliance with the head of Kuat Drive Yards, arguably the most powerful shipbuilding company in the galaxy. Not me, _you_. Our newest Kuat of Kuat would provide you ships at great discounts if you asked. You’re a leader to which the people of Tatooine can relate. And you’re strong, Yani. I believe you can make a difference with the right opportunity and backup.” He gestured to the empty, looming throne. “This is your opportunity.”

She was coming around, but still, she faltered. Yani wasn’t a queen.

“If you don’t take that throne,” Boba said, “someone else will, and then there’ll be more dead Twi’lek girls.”

Yani’s resolve hardened instantly, like quick-dry duracrete in the sun. She may not have everything figured out, but Boba was right. At least while she was in power, there would be no more sex slaves paraded through the palace in demeaning outfits, no more girls eaten alive for entertainment. And maybe, just maybe, she could extend that protection to the rest of the planet. “I’ll do it,” she said.

Boba sagged with relief, but it was a sag that straightened his posture at the same time. “Fantastic. I’ll be with you every step of the way. But,” he hesitated, “it might help to have some more people at your back whom you trust. Maybe those pilots from Corellia that you’re friends with. And unless you’re really good with numbers, you need an accountant to balance your books, especially if you’re going to be transitioning from illegal to legal goods. Do you know anyone who could help?”

This was really happening. The little slave from Taris was going to take over a syndicate and run it the way she wanted, to help the people who struggled to get by. Yani smiled. “I do, actually.” Thrumming with excitement, she pulled out a comlink from her pocket and held down the button to send out a transmission. “Ta?” she said. “I have a project for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I confess to you guys how terrified I am for _Book of Boba Fett_ coming out? I love Boba so much, but I don’t trust the creators not to play into that male power fantasy with him on the throne. Like, there are a few fanfictions out there already that describe this female fantasy of “Boba frees all the Tatooine slaves and rules with their adoration and everyone is happy,” but that’s not what’s going to happen, is it? I know we saw that shot of Fennec releasing the Twi’lek woman, but I’m still afraid that the creators won’t want to upset the (male) fanbase by making such drastic changes as getting rid of all the sex slaves in Jabba’s Palace. Come on! _Everyone knows_ that Jabba’s Palace has to have its iconic dancing girls! And so _Book of Boba Fett_ is going to show more pornographic violence against women, but this time in ~high definition.~
> 
> I hate that I have to feel so sick with worry. I hate that I’m SO excited for this show to come out, and yet I have to fear that it’s going to traumatize me.
> 
> I definitely understand if Boba on the throne is hot to you (it's hot to me, too), and I indulge in sexy Boba as king of the castle in my smut series Mechanics and Mandalorians. So go check that out if you want! But I'm trying to say something different with this story.


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